Interview with Tony O'Neill

Tony O'Neill has seen and experienced some pretty 'fucked up shit'. Overdoses, violence, drug addiction, homelessness, petty theft, emotional breakdown, the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Because Tony O'Neill has actually account seen and experienced these things, his account of them is uncliched, moving, and sometimes hilarious. In October his new semi-autobiographical novel 'Down and Out on Murder Mile' will be released, a 'follow-up' to the 'underground classic' 'Digging the Vein'.

CONNOR TOMAS O'BRIEN: On the front cover of your upcoming novel "Down and Out on Murder Mile", there is a blurb from Sam Jordison from the Guardian calling you, "a man who has taken the term rock'n'roll poet to its furthest edges." What is a 'rock and roll poet' do you think? Are you a 'rock and roll poet'?

TONY O'NEILL: Well, it has quite a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?  Gives you the impression that I sit around writing poems and trashing hotel rooms when I get bored…  I gotta tell you, I don’t really know what a rock and roll poet is.  It’s something that got said, and it looked good, so we stuck it on the cover.  Do I consider myself a “rock and roll poet”?  No.  I’m just a guy who writes.  I’m not precious about poetry.  A lot of people take themselves very seriously when they write poetry.  As if poetry is this precious fragile thing that has a capital P and has to be written and read in a state of extreme reverence.  I don’t think that. That kind of attitude turns me off completely. 

But should poetry have some of rock and rolls energy and aggression?  Sure.  I listen to a lot of music when I write.  I am influenced by music in how I write.  What I’m listening to definitely does seep into my writing and how I express myself.  

CONNOR: You used to be in the Brian Jonestown Massacre for a while. I don't know if that annoys you, people bringing that up. Are you in any bands right now? What bands do you listen to when you are writing?

TONY: No, that doesn’t bother me at all.  I mean I find it funny.  I wrote about in my first book because it was a funny story, and just a catalogue of druggy incompetence.  But most of what I remember of it was more to do with the drugs we were taking than the music we played.  I mean we barely played music.  We spent most of our time just sitting around getting high and talking about playing music.  

I’m not in any bands right now.  I just don’t have that drive to play music.  I wouldn’t want to be in a band at the moment.  There comes a point in your life when you realize that you are never going to write a song as perfect and beautiful as “Sad Song” by Lou Reed, or “When You Sleep” by My Bloody Valentine, and then – well, why bother?  There’s enough mediocre musicians in the world, I don’t need to be another one.  I mean I put a lot of dedication and thought into what I do – whatever I do, whether it be making music, shooting heroin, writing books, tying my shoelaces, whatever.  I put as much dedication into it as I do into breathing. So when something isn’t working anymore – it’s gone.

I listen to a lot of different sounds when I write.  I don’t tend to listen to stuff that I can hear the lyrics too well on otherwise I find myself listening and not typing.  So either instrumental stuff like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, King Tubby, or just intense noise like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain. 

Bad Brains,  Neu,  David Bowie’s “Low”…  that kind of stuff.

CONNOR: "Down and Out On Murder Mile" is 'due' on October 28th. Can you type a little bit about it? Also, it is being published by Harper Perennial, which I think of as a 'big shot' publisher, are you excited about that? How are you going to celebrate the launch?

TONY: “Down and out on Murder Mile” is a continuation of what I was doing with “Digging the Vein”.  It’s based upon the period that I left Los Angeles and moved to London.  It’s the story of my second marriage, to a woman who was also a heroin addict.  Murder Mile is a stretch in East London where they had more shooting per capita that Johannesburg.  That’s where we lived, and that’s where the drugs and the methadone clinic were.  It’s also the first thing I have written which touches upon how I quit heroin, what my motivations for doing that were…  it’s certainly the most “naked” thing I have ever written.  

It’s a more hopeful book than Digging the Vein, and I’m really pleased with how it came out.  I mean the fact that it got picked up by Harper Perennial is amazing.  After the call came, there was a long period where I just couldn’t believe it was happening.  I don’t really consider myself a mainstream writer, so partly my reaction was “are they mad?”  But Perennial in the states are run by a very smart, literate woman called Carrie Kania, and she is somehow managing to balance running a business with having good taste.  I mean they just picked up a real literary hero of mine, Dan Fante.  They signed Dennis Cooper.  They have people like Sebastian Horsley, a man who claims to have fucked over 10,000 prostitutes and once had himself crucified in the Philippines.  They had a New York Times bestseller from Josh Kilmer Purcell who was writing about his time as a drag queen in New York, and his affair with a rich crack head.  They’re taking risks, and I love that.

Well, when the book comes out there will be a lot of alcohol consumed, I can promise that.  But you know my head is on the next one.  I’m just writing, writing, writing.  I’m doing a book of short stories for the French at the moment, a new house called 13th Note Press.  I can’t assume that anything will change because my book came out on Harper Perennial.  I just have to keep writing what I want to write and hoping that people are gonna want to read it.

CONNOR: Do you have enough material for a 'sequel to the sequel' of Digging the Vein or are you moving in a different direction with the short stories you are working on?

TONY: Oh yes.  I mean a good period of using heroin and you’ll save up enough stories to last a lifetime.  A lot of shit tends to happen to you when you’re living that lifestyle… but a lot of my newer stories are not autobiographical.  They inhabit the same “world” as stuff like Digging the Vein, but they are fictional.  Some of the stuff gets absurd and surreal.  The subject mater varies, one called “Balls” is about a guy who gets drugged and castrated by a prostitute.  He survives, although he hasn’t got any balls anymore.  He ends up churning out bestselling novels.  Another, “Bill Bailey” is about a guy who picks up a girl at a bar, and gets roped into killing her neighbor’s dog because it barks too much.  I wrote a story about a guy who steals a suitcase for drug money, and when he opens it finds a child’s penis and dismembered fingers inside of it.  

After Down and Out on Murder Mile, I think I might stay away from another book about my own life for now.  I’m working on a totally fictional novel that’s too early on to really talk about.  Co-writing “Hero of the Underground” really gave me a sense of freedom about what subject matter I could tackle.  I mean, that book is about drugs, but it’s also about fame, and the world of pro football.  Before I started writing the book I had never even SEEN a game of pro football, not even on TV.  I mean I am not a sports guy.  But being able to learn about that and (I feel) write about it in a convincing way really showed me that there was no subject matter that was off limits anymore.

Except chick lit.

CONNOR: The fictional 'world' that you are creating for your short stories seems simultaneously very funny and very violent. What 'draws you' to writing about absurd acts of violence? Can violence be 'funny'?

TONY: Well, I write what I know.  The world is full of absurd acts of violence; we live in a violent world.  I am an angry person.  The world makes me angry.  Elections make me angry, and the laws make me angry, and that’s what I write out of.  A mix of anger, and the confusing urge to laugh at it all.

When I was seven I saw what was probably the funniest and darkest thing I have ever seen.  There was an English comedian called Tommy Cooper.  He was on a live broadcast, one of those variety show type things that would be on TV on Saturday evening in England in the 1980’s.  So the curtain goes up.  He does a few routines, and gets laughs.  Then he goes through this very intense preparation for something.  His thing is that he wears a fez; you know those little red hats with the tassels.  So he adjusts his fez, his collar, basically he’s getting ready for something.  It goes on for a while, and the anticipation is building.  There are giggles.  What is he going to do next?  He walks to the front of the stage.  He opens his arms to the audience.  Stands perfectly still.

And then he falls back, perfect pratfall, bam! Onto the floor.  It’s so strange and absurd that everybody bursts out laughing.  The curtain goes down, and everybody thinks it’s the funniest shit they’ve ever seen.  So weird and unexpected. 

Later they announce that he’d had a heart attack and died.  So we all watched him die, and not only that, we laughed at him as he died.

I suppose that’s the kind of feeling I want to evoke in my writing.  An uncomfortable collusion.  We’re laughing, or smiling, or just getting a hard on over what we’re reading, but we’re not sure if we should do.  

I hope that made some sense to you.  But yes, violence can be funny.  I mean anything can be funny, it depends how you present it.  So that’s one side of my writing.  The other side, I suppose, is about exposing myself, my guts, letting people take a peek inside.  I write about my past a lot because I am still trying to make sense of it, and come to terms with it.  There is a lot of darkness inside of me, and getting clean from drugs did nothing to lighten it.  Hubert Selby Jr, one of my favorite authors, once said something like: “When you quit dope, that’s when you realize just how dark you really are…”  and it’s something that rings very true for me.  So I guess I’ve moved on a little from trying to make sense of my past, to trying to make sense of the person I see in the mirror.  Now I have to think about “what made me want to inject heroin and cocaine into myself 7, 8, 9, 10 times day for years and years?”

There are a lot of writers right now, young writers, and the scene is really thriving.  And sometimes we all get banded together, as if by fluke of geography or age we are somehow a gang.  But for me, the writers I really feel affinity with are the ones who are obviously fucked up and they are trying to make sense of the world. 

Those are the ones who speak to me.  The fucking maniacs.