Howard Stern? Feh. Let's Talk About Abbie Hoffman.

The well-lubed publicity machine is now squirting out dispatches on the meaning of Howard Stern's move from WXRK (K-Rock) in New York to Sirius satellite radio on Janury 9. I have nothing of contemporary interest to add to the discussion, since I stopped listening to the radio show years ago and never had any interest in Stern's TV show. I still follow his career out of nostalgia for the days 20 years ago when I was a huge fan of him on WNBC and then K-ROCK and even had the incredible opportunity to interview him -- about his back problems and healthy lifestyle.

Around 1986-1987 I did celebrity interviews for a groovy publication in New York called Whole Life Times. Somehow WLT snagged an interview with Stern to talk about his involvement with the Alexander Technique. I drew the assignment. Like other journalists, I found the off-mike Stern polite, cooperative and amused by the on-air alter ego. That was before he got divorced and became the gargantuan King of All Media. The package of articles was a huge hit for Whole Life.

Far more memorable and haunting is another Whole Life gig: my interviews with 60s radical Abbie Hoffman in 1986. Like Stern, Hoffman was a media master, but with a far different bent and messier life arc. The interview coincided with his short-lived radio show on WBAI in New York, Radio Free USA.

Knowing Hoffman's skill with the press, I realized the only way to get a decent, insightful interview would be to go beyond the sound bites. Like somebody who's been on too many first dates, an oft-interviewed celebrity has a ready answer for all the predictable questions. With his quick wit and well-known persona, Hoffman had a celebrity armor as thick as anybody in Hollywood.

So I read every book of his I could find, along with articles on him. The research served me well during our five hours of interviews at his apartment on East 34th Street.

Too well, in fact. The sheer bulk of material slowed down the transcription of the audio tapes, and led to a price disagreement between Whole Life and the transcriber. By the time the job was done and paid for, the editor-publisher judged the material too dated. Hence, my interview with Abbie Hoffman never appeared.

Until now.

I saved the tapes, saved my research, and saved my introduction and the edited interview. I probably have the raw transcript someplace. The lack of this historic material from publication always grieved me, because Hoffman and I both worked hard to get a good interview. He had to think, and that was an exceptionally satisfying moment in my career.

Until I started this blog, I never could see a way to get this amazing encounter in front of people, in any format. Now, I can. Everything exists only on paper; the floppy disks on which I typed the material on my Tandy 1000 computer are long gone. To give readers a sense of what we discussed, I have included here my list of questions (as I wrote them), along with my introduction to the interview. I will type of parts of the interview itself later. Until then, enjoy this fossil from my career, when I sat down with history.

I cannot write this entry, or think about the subject, without a wave of sadness. For all the life force and energy Abbie Hoffman projected, he was a troubled man, diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. His depression cropped up obliquely in the interview and finally the bi-polar demons took full possession of him. Hoffman killed himself on April 12, 1989. He was 52 years old.

Interview Questions

1. details of radio show. How get started, how view it.
2. goals. Ever done it before. Format, approach.
3. see it pushing back limits of free speech. How.
4. music show? If dissemination is a key, is Capt. Midnight a hero?
5. once said you’re better on radio than tv. Why.
6. called Cronkite best newsman. Who’s tops now. Any politicians you have high respect for?
7. if it flops how would you react.
7a. what are your thoughts on current censorship efforts. Concerned politics will be the next target. Ever debated War Against Pornography types.
8. besides radio show what are current projects efforts.
9. can you make a living doing that.
10. still see self as a community organizer.
10a. wrote that life of activist is two years before they burn out. How have you continued.
10a. Wrote that long hair lost its social bite. What has social bite, impact now?
10b. wrote that politics is swaddled in “perhaps.” What’s biggest perhaps in your career?
11. has there been an evolution in your thinking? How?
11a. Once called Amerika just another Latin dictatorship. Still believe that?
11b. impressions of Nicaragua.
11c. is thwat we do there any less justifiable that what Soviets do in Afghanistan.
12. still believe in value of ripoff, credit card theft, violence as a way of getting attention, trashing? Reflect the period or general principles.
13. difference between stealing from corp. and rich old lady on Park Avenue.
14. personal stuff. Turning 50. big deal or no?
15. how old are your children? Teach them to disrespect authority, even yours? Apply lessons to them? Status of relationship. Do activists make good parents.
15a. Your father never spoke of intimate things. Have you tried to avoid that with your children.
16. Are they political or yuppies or what?
17. do any go to Brandeis?
18. ever in touch with Jock Mahoney or Martin Peretz?
19. how did you explain drug bust to your children?
20. what did you tell them about drug use?
21. what exactly happened. Newsweek had some facts. What really happened, and why? Charges, plea, time served, lessons learned.
22. change your views on cocaine? Wrote at one point that coke wasn’t bad. What about crack.
22a. parallels between you and Stephen Bingham.
23. things that were unclear: when did you and Anita get divorced?
24. what was the famous sexist comment?
25. said you and Rubin were still close. Still true?
26. comments on Wenner, Hayden. Were the books a way of settling scores? What do they think about you.
27. Looking back on the attention, celebrity, do you have a private self left? Ever stop being ABBIE HOFFMAN and just be Abbie Hoffman?
28. how do you relax. Still a jock? Tennis, bowling.
29. are you a vegetarian, work out.
30. role of Judaism. Touched on it in books. A faith, a culture.
30a. difference between living with Jewish and gentile women.
31. talked about Maslow, influences on you. Who have you influenced?

Introduction to the Interview

Thanks to those guys named Reagan, Regan, North and Poindexter, Abbie Hoffman now operates on a fresh jolt of energy. Ollie’s Follies have focused interest on US skullduggery in Central America, long a passionate concern of Hoffman.

“The shock hasn’t set into the American psyche yet because, with Nixon, nobody liked him for 30years,” Hoffman told Whole Life recently. “With Reagan, here’s somebody who led people up the mountain, then kicked them in the teeth.”

People were talking to Hoffman recently on another matter – anticipating his 50th birthday on November 30, one of those “an era passes” events. That’s changed, as his views on Nicaragua and the Central Intelligence Agency take on fresh urgency. “it’s nice to reach the age of 50 and see Ronald Reagan drop 17 points in the polls the day after your birthday,” he noted. “They’re talking to a prophet. It’s so lucky. I can be a rebel for the next 25 years.”

Hoffman has already logged a quarter century of rebellion. And if ever an individual stuck to his beliefs through hell and high water, it is Abbott Howard Hoffman, the favorite son of Worcester, Mass., and cousin of Sydney Schanberg [2005 update: Schanberg writes the Press Clips column for the Village Voice]. People familiar with Hoffman’s exploits in the 1960s probably focus on the big events – the anti-war protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the conspiracy trial of the Chicago Seven after that, Washington rallies, Hoffman’s drug bust and the years underground.

That’s the tip of the iceberg. The full story is more complex and interesting. A history and education round out the portrait. The grizzled, pugnacious Hoffman draws on them when you ask him a question. He’ll have a thoughtful and detailed answer, with plenty of context. And if you don’t want to hear all the nuances, he’ll tell you anyway.

Hoffman began to flee the mainstream by the age of 13, hanging out with neighborhood toughs at pool halls and bowling alleys. He studied psychology at Brandeis University, where faculty members included Herbert Marcuse, Irving Howe, Max Lerner and Hoffman’s favorite, Abraham Maslow.

At the same time, Hoffman’s college days coincided with the 1950s and all that implied. Hoffman wrote in his superb 1980 autobiography, “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture,” “Sex was cut short just before going all the way. Dope was nonexistent. Politics were minimal, and Brandeis,, even at that, was considered ‘avant garde.’ Avant garde! The other campuses must have been real numb-numb joints.”

Nonetheless, he moved beyond the era’s conformity. Summer work on a defense plant assembly line gave him first-hand knowledge of the “proletarian class” concept. Touring Europe in the summer of 1958, he stumbled onto his first political demonstration in Paris and earned his first beating by police. In March 1959 he was spellbound by “the best speaker I ever heard,” a triumphant Fidel Castro addressing 80,000 in Harvard Stadium.

Politicization continued during graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. In May 1960, he was swept up in a riot outside a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee (the late, unlamented HUAC) in San Francisco. Recalling how normal life seemed just blocks away from the rumble, he recalled, “No one seemed aware that the century’s most turbulent decade had just begun.”

The personal intruded. Hoffman returned to the East and married girlfriend Sheila when she got pregnant. Son Andrew Michael was born December 31, 1960. Daughter Amy followed in 1962. It was an unhappy six-year union, during which time Hoffman worked at the Worcester State Hospital for three years. The experience convinced him “the problem lay out there. Beyond the walls.

He became involved with the American Civil Liberties Union and worked in New York a while for Walter Reade Theaters, becoming the first manager of the Baronet-Coronet Theater, across from Bloomingdale’s (he was fired after a disastrous opening night). His last job was covering part of Massachusetts for Westwood Pharmaceuticals. That lasted three years, but his heart was really in working for civil rights through the Worcester chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“There was something about singing freedom songs in a black church, stomping on the wooden floor, smiling, gearing up your courage, that summoned a spirit never to be recaptured. At least not for me,” he wrote. “Those years, 1963-1965, were filled with a cry of a movement at its purest moment. He headed south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and got arrested five times.

Hoffman lost the job with Westwood, got divorced, and moved to the Lower East Side, E. 11th Street and Avenue C, where he honed his communication skills and met his second wife, Anita. The next four years re full of the legendary stuff – leaflets, pranks, street theater (throwing money on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the April 15, 1967 anti-war protest that drew 700,000 people to the United Nations, the effort to levitate the Pentagon off the ground a few months alter, the Yippie movement born on January 1, 1968, the convention riots and then the Chicago Conspiracy Trail in the fall of 1969. “Steal This Book” appeared in 1971, after rejection by some 30 publishers. America Hoffman, aka Alan, was born to Abbie and Anita in 1971. Hoffman later got a vasectomy, which he had filmed “as a political/cultural act.”

By then, the anti-war movement was disintegrating. Hoffman still faced numerous charges when the world turned upside-down: in August 1973 he was arrested for his role as the broker in the sale of three pounds of cocaine for $36,000. He told Whole Life, “I was lured into doing something that I wouldn’t normally have done by some people, some of whom were friends, and some of whom were police agents . . . . It was a low point in my life and I was susceptible to trying something.”

Knowing he was in deep trouble, Hoffman opted for life underground. The wrenching yet vital six-year period found him traveling, teaching, living in Central America, writing essays collected in “Square Dancing in the Ice Age,” meeting a new woman (“running mate” Johanna Lawrenson, with whom he now lives in Manhattan), and ultimately leading environmental protests in upstate New York as Barry Freed.

Hoffman resurfaced in 1980 to serve 10 months in prison and work release programs. The years had not dulled the Establishment’s fear of and fascination with him. “First I was treated like Son of Sam, total maximum security. Tied, chained to a bus with troopers front and back,” he recalled. “The worst place you want to be famous is prison.”

With that episode past, Hoffman has spent recent years intensely involved in Central American, South African and environmental issues. He has led groups to Nicaragua, and this fall hosted a short-lived radio program on WBAI, Radio Free USA, meant to do free speech rather than talk about it. After four live broadcasts the show as shut down for more fundraising efforts.

Just before Thanksgiving Hoffman was arrested along with 50 students for seizing a building at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to protest CIA recruiting. At trespassing trials this spring Hoffman will use Massachusett’s “necessity defense,” pleading not guilty on the basis that the action sought to stop larger crimes (CIA activities).

“You don’t invite the Mafia on campus,” Hoffman argued. “he called the proceedings “political trial as seminar,” compared to the “political trial as circus” in Chicago. Witnesses will describe the CIA’s past and current activities. A not-guilty verdict would, he argued, indicate CIA guilt.

Much of Hoffman’s energy these days goes toward assembling a staff and legal team and fundraising for the trial. He also wants to get a national student organization going. Plus, he’s working on his latest book, “Steal This Urine Test,” on how to oppose and beat that procedure.

Hoffman summed himself up as middle-aged, with plenty of vim and vigor left. He phrases it in earthier terms: “I’m still full of shit, I’m in love, I’m still ready to take a few more swings, so what the fuck. You have to look up and say, ‘I’ll take the good with the bad.’ So, if I didn’t’ have those experiences, life would be more shallow than it is to me. I wouldn’t have been real. I would have been a series of signing autographs.”