.Mm ~C£ ~ tLrf{5/3 t!dau /; 7 1414 &-/Yu1V! T ~~If 1M e_ CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE anyone in {{:.· lives alone, :.~ tionship go- · ;:. ch. 1e 2nd and erdam, ~ m ber 1977 I. ..·' i.]j I j I France Morin interview·ed Cha rlemagne Palestine in M ontreal on M arch 24. 25 and 26. 1978. i i I. France Morin: Charlemagne Palestine, you vitalness in her life except maybe as the key are Russian American. Were you of the to survival. In fact, the only man I ever 1 I generation that came to America or was it remember her having a real strong power­ your grandparents? ful, emotional and poetic link with was me. Charlemagne Palestine: My mother and I was in a sense her only husband and father were both children when they came perhaps still am. rc to America. They were born in Russia and You are talking of a very early age? al both came around the same time, the se­ We are talking about the beginning, as soon fu cond immigration of Russians around 1913. as I could walk, or talk, or take over, she h.: l From Minsk, which at that time was con­ was my protector against my father. Even­ ar .,' ' sidered to be part of Poland. My father tually my father liked me because I sang in (:'i- p~ came from Odessa. Both their families the synagogue and he used to like to come ch established themselves in New York. In and hear me sing. I was six or seven, seven la1 mother's family there were seven children. maybe. I used to do imitations of Johnny My grandmother left my grandfather for Ray and Frank Sinatra's songs, that kind of another man in the Yiddish theatre. She stuff for the neighbours. As a little kid, they .. ' disappeared and left the seven children tried to get me on Children's Hour and Ted with him. He had a breakdown, heart­ Mack's Amateur Hour because I was a real broken and everything and the family split entertainer. I would sing all these songs that ! i I . I up. Some of them went to orphanages, were on the hit parade like I was a crooner. some of them went to different places. My . A little kid doing stuff like tearing his shirts mother got married very young to my and singing. My mother always used to father. He had her work for his aunt, clean­ show me to all the neighbours. ing the house for room and board and a lit­ Did you consider yourself as a hero or did tle money. That went on for a very long you feel lonely? time and finally they got married. So she I never considered myself a hero. No, I was married, in a sense, out of necessity, not to a lonely kid, but I was always making be out in the street; I don't think she ever things, doing things. I was also a very really loved him. She openly admits it now. precocious kid. Was she a happy woman, when you were a And what about school? kid? I was just like I am now. I had a lot of style. No, she was very energetic, in fact if Teachers either loved me or hated me. I anything did affect me, it is the fact that I could not memorize things well and stuff never really had a father and that my like that. I was good at math for a while and mother was so energetic all the time. She then I got bored with it ... I had style, the was always working, she was always doing way I talked, the way I thought, the way I things in order to compensate for, I guess .. would get somebody else in trouble; I was a she was never a submissive woman, she was cute kid, I had a lot of theatricality about never in love. Even if she loved music, she me. But I was not a good student. Women loved to listen to the radio, she would cry were always my allies. They always helped when she listened to a beautiful song but I me all through my schooling. 100 never got a sense that men had any real What kind of relationship did you have with • , our brother? early so I slowly learned to use it. I went I never really had any relationship with him. through bad times around fifteen or sixteen, He had a relationship to me in that he was going to a psychiatrist. I did not know how always envious on the one hand and idoliz­ to use all this power, all this energy, all this Ing on the other. It turns out that finally he knowledge. But I had many years to slowly wanted to be an entertainer. My mother learn how to deal with the energy I had in­ would call him your lazy middle-of-the­ side me. With him it came like a geyser that road-kind-of-guy. That was the way he had been stocked up for years. All of a sud­ ge? always was. Then, later on in life ... he had a den the cork pulled out and it was like a funny way about him, because our family champagne bottle gone berserk. has a funny way about them. You know, we I guess it changed a lot of things in your life? are nutsy-kookoo and Slavic and his It changed everything. First of all, I became physicality was very strange. He had a lot of the comic, I had always been a · bit of a charisma but he never used it and finally, comic, the idea of the comedian, of he who later on in life, it got stronger. Some people stands, who looks around and speaks of it of J start very excited and then they peter out, became a part of my work almost instantly. hat kind but he began to look more and more in­ Within a few months there was a piece, I le kid, tense every year. The last year I saw him, he did not even know, it was unconscious, but urand followed me all around New York. We I took on his I ife, I added his quest to my would go from bar to bar and he would im­ own. I had always seen the image of the itate my actions. He would stand in dif­ world with him in the middle and me on the ferent parts of the bar and he would do edge. He was going to have children in the these antics. The first time we ever had a middle of the world and I would always be comic show together was the last year of tightroping on the edge. The second he his life. He would even imitate some of my died, I started pulling away from the edge style; he would watch how I would do and started r.1oving closer to the middle . something then he would do it the same ... moving away from the edge because you '·No, I was way. It is like he was playing the salesman, were afraid ... of doing the same thing? ys making · he was beginning to understand purely I knew that I could not die. I had a death so a very what delivery was about and he was shock­ wish from the time I was very young. He ingly good. became me in some strange way, I don't He never had a chance to perform puplicly know, I am even wondering if he did not ot of style. before he died? become me. This may sound bizarre, but :1ted me. I Actually, he began to call me up on the maybe there was a sacrifice that was sup­ I and stuff ~ phone a lot, at four, five in the morning, the posed to happen in my family and I was to 1 while and last months and I had the vision once of be the early sacrifice. My psychiatrist said f style, the holding the phone and it was shaking, so in­ that if I had not come to him, I would be the way I :.i tense was his delivery. I had the first terror dead. So maybe he saved me. Somebody Jle; I was a :'t. ever that he was going to surpass me. I was supposed to die. A death wish is not :1lity about :• __f: remember feeling it the first time and did something that everybody just has. I almost 1t. Women ., did die a couple of times, car accidents, etc. -~.'. not have much more time to experience it ays helped because he was dead soon .after. That is You seem to always be running away from why he died, he could not handle it. It is death? r have with like, as a magician, I was given my stripes Yes. I once told a friend: "Death is at my 101 with Jew heels every minute and I just keep running My mother wanted me to be the big deal, What at away from it." In some way that is how I like a Jerry Lewis, Tony Bennett, Frank l ~ :· 'classical feel deep inside. It is survival. It is the idea Sinatra, like the important Jewish enter­ that at any moment the enemy is tainers anyway. For a Jew, the great singer :l~. J Jheory n - ~i: said to t~ everywhere. If I stop for just a minute I will was AI Jolson, he was like a cantor, like the ~ .