Kim Fowley: Criminal Thug or Golden Boy?
(Answer at End of Article!)

"You keep dwelling on my arrogance," says Kim Fowley. "I can act arrogant if you want, but I believe I'm only arrogant when it's time to get paid. I'm arrogant when people don't want to pay me my share, or when I have a musical project that I believe in and others don't get it. I'm actually a nice guy who likes to make music, but there's always someone who wants to say no. When you say no to me, I use atomic bombs. I'll beat the shit out of you. I've been in the Army. I'll fight you over a guitar solo. For every Elvis and every Sex Pistols and every Beatles and every ABBA, there was someone who had to get heavy with the record label. To paraphrase the Queen of France in 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' Act One, Scene One, after the Queen of France tells Cyrano that he's a wonderful man: 'No, your Majesty, I do wonderful things.'"

Kim Fowley has done wonderful things while selling over 102 million records in a career that covers five decades. He really can be kind of arrogant, though. My first contact with Fowley was a phone mail message explaining that I should only contact him if I was properly prepared with decent questions. "Call me if you think you're up to playing this game," he said – which is something I'd rather hear from porn stars that I interview.

Fowley still deserves to be a little suspicious. He wants to talk to people who know rock 'n' roll. He doesn't want to dwell on scoring his first hit by producing the Hollywood Argyles' "Alley Oop" in 1960. He doesn't want to be pressed on any gossip about creating The Runaways back in 1975. The producer/songwriter/recording artist always has some kind of modern success going. For example, he charted last year courtesy of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, who included a mighty version of the "Nut Rocker" instrumental on their Night Castle album. Fowley owned the copyright on the 1962 original that B. Bumble & the Stingers took to #1 in the UK.

You can find the amazing discography at KimFowley.net. He can't keep track of everything, though. I have to inform him about recent reissues of two important Fowley productions – those being The Quick's 1976 glam album Mondo Deco and a twofer CD combining Helen Reddy's Ear Candy (from 1977) and We'll Sing in the Sunshine (1978). Fowley also just summed up some of his early career with two volumes of recordings on Brooklyn's Norton label. (That's Kim, center, with Norton owners Billy Miller and Miriam Linna in the photo above.) One Man's Garbage and Another Man's Gold are each subtitled Lost Treasures From the Vaults: 1959-69. These aren't the first Fowley compilations of that period, but they're impressive collections of soul, pop, and primal punk. The liner notes are also a tribute to Fowley's work ethic, detailing how the young hustler quickly became the equal of many old pros.

"I have an IQ of 164," Fowley explains. "Everyone's slower than me. I was a freshman at UCLA when I was 14. I first retired at 24, and I'm 70 years old now and dating a 20-year-old. I'm dating a lot of other girls, too. I'm a delight as a male escort. I fucked old women in high school. I was paid to make women come. I was ready for a scene that wanted to fight, fuck, and take over the world and become rock 'n' roll creeps and rule the night. That's the type of individual I am, was, and will be. I wasn't the only one back then, and we conducted ourselves accordingly. Everyone had their own labels. You had to make one up if you didn't have one. You made your own band. You'd get together with a bunch of other assholes and try to look cool and then maybe a bunch of dirty bitches will fuck you and you'd get to eat some greasy food. This was lowbrow stuff. It's not politically correct. It's designed to antagonize authority and older people. It needs to be heard now after years of political correctness, after Barbara Bush and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. All the politically incorrect stuff is on Norton."