I know exactly what you’re talking about.8
SPEARS: Because I don’t like stuff about me. I could never do an autobiography about my life. I think that’s so lame and cheesy and self-serving. But this thing I’m writing is just like trying to help people.
A year later, Spears scrapped her idea for a self-help book and asked me to write her autobiography with her. That book didn’t happen either.
[Continued . . .]
When it comes to one-hit wonders, the group ? and the Mysterians (pronounced Question Mark and the Mysterians) stands at the head of the pack. In 1966, the band’s first single, “96 Tears,” came out of nowhere and topped the charts. The organ-drenched song is not only still played on the radio today, but is renowned as a garage rock classic and an important precursor of punk rock. Before this interview, all I knew about the artist known as ? was that he was a skinny, leather-clad Mexican-American who had supposedly never removed his sunglasses since the sixties.
You said you originally wanted to be a dancer, so how’d you end up becoming a singer?
?: The first time was in Flint, Michigan. I asked if I could sing a song after one of my dance routines. Then my parents got me a tape recorder, and I started singing songs like “96 Tears” into it when I was ten.
You composed it when you were ten years old?
?: Yes, and then I wanted to learn to play an instrument so I could make the music in my head come alive. I went to the music store, and this girl said that her dad knew how to play piano and could teach me. So I went to the nice side of town. I thought, “This is what it must be like to be rich.” Everyone wondered what I was doing there.
I asked her dad, “Could you teach me how to play the music in my head?” He said, “You got to go to the beginning with ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ ” And I said, “I ain’t got no time for that.” I sang “96 Tears” for him, and he played it. But then he said the lessons would cost ten dollars a week, so I knew I wasn’t going back there. In the back of my head, I said, “Forget it.”
But eventually you formed your own band?
?: Yeah, we recorded with no headphones, no acoustics, no separation—just a two-track machine. We recorded “96 Tears,” then made up the B-side. I had remembered a lot of the words I’d written, but I’d forgotten some of them, too. Eight months later, it was number one.
How did you end up getting signed?
?: I needed a record label, so I went with Cameo Records because their records were orange and it’s my favorite color. If I had known the Beatles were on Capitol when they approached me or Elvis was on RCA, I would have gone with them. And then I got mad and felt like getting off the label when our record came out and it wasn’t orange.
What do you think of the term garage rock?
?: It was just rock and roll. After “96 Tears,” rock and roll died. Hendrix and everyone were great musicians, but they weren’t playing rock and roll. They called it rock. So what happened to rock and roll? I call our music the new age of rock and roll. I got ESP, too. I don’t use it all the time, though.
As in extrasensory perception?
?: Yeah, at first the press said I was a gimmick, but how can I be? I’m a real person. I was born on Mars many eons ago. I was around when dinosaurs were around. I’ve always had dreams of T. rex chasing me, and he got me. I discovered this week that they just found footprints from when the dinosaurs were around and they weren’t ape footprints. I said, “See, I told you I was around then. We hid so we wouldn’t get eaten.” Since then, I’ve lived many different lives. And even though I was born on Mars, I’m not an alien. I hate when people call it Mars, because it’s not really Mars anyway.
What is it then?
?: It’s just a planet, do you know what I’m saying. It’s part of the universe. That’s man’s ignorance: They have to label everything. They have to call us Martians just like they call the blacks niggers. Who is mankind to do that just because they feel more superior?
Why do you never remove your sunglasses?
?: I never take my sunglasses off. Somebody instilled that in me, gave me that power and ability to have that. I have so much knowledge. When I return in another lifeform, I may be a tennis player or a basketball player because I’m very athletic today.
How do you know you’re going to be reincarnated as a human?
?: Well, I myself am going to come back in the year ten thousand and I’m going to be singing “96 Tears.” And people will know it’s me in this other body.
How will they know?
?: Because I will say a unique phrase that no one in history has said before. And I’ve only told it to a few people. But for right now, I’m just going to rock and roll.
Can you tell me the phrase?
?: No.
It took a lot of work to get Ben Stiller to agree to an interview. He was worried that he’d be portrayed as neurotic, like the character he plays in the movie he was promoting at the time, Greenberg. And he was upset that Alec Baldwin was rumored to be on the cover of Rolling Stone instead of him. After several weeks of negotiations with Stiller’s publicist, I finally met him in the entranceway to the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. He was slumped in a black overcoat, with unkempt hair and a wiry gray goatee growing uncomfortably on his chin. A far cry from the outgoing, extroverted characters he usually plays on screen, in conversation he was guarded, as if imagining how every word was going to be used against him.
Your publicist called and said you were worried that all we’d talk about is whether you’re as neurotic as the character you play in Greenberg. Don’t you think that would actually make you seem that neurotic?
BEN STILLER: Yes, but I didn’t know that happened, though I take responsibility for it as a person who has a publicist. I honestly didn’t. A lot of times, publicists do things like that.
I looked at your top Google searches, and one of the top searches is “Ben Stiller bipolar.”
STILLER: I said it once to a writer in jest, and the irony in those things sometimes doesn’t come out. I learned my lesson, too, which is don’t joke about bipolars. It isn’t fair to people who have bipolar disorder.
So let’s put the rumor to rest once and for all: Are you bipolar?
STILLER: No.
And you’re not taking any medication?
STILLER: No.
You go to therapy, probably, but not for that?
STILLER: I have in my life, yes.
But you’re not in therapy now?
STILLER: