MD: Remember your first drink?

BR: Yeah, there was a restaurant were I grew up in Lemon Grove called Benny and Jane's, they were celebrating their anniversary and there was free beer for everyone. I got a bowl of chili and they gave me a glass of beer along with it. I didn't particularly like it. I asked if they'd please bring me a glass of water.

MD: So it wasn't love at first taste.
BR: It didn't particularly appeal to me.

MD: How old were you?
BR: Five.

MD: How old were you when you started liking it?
BR: I started drinking beer regularly in high school and it still took me awhile to get used to the taste. I drank for effect. A friend of mine's father was a drunk so we'd go to his house in the morning and fill up a thermos with wine. We'd drink it on the grass in front of the school. Once a teacher walked by and asked what we were drinking. I told him it was a nice little red wine and would he like some? He just said, you guys, I can't believe anything you say. Tell anybody the truth and they won't believe you. The truth will get you around anything.

MD: What's your drink now?
BR: I like martinis, vodka martinis.

MD: Describe the perfect vodka martini.
BR: My martinis are completely different than most people's. Winston Churchill said American martinis were barbaric because we used a third vermouth and two-thirds liquor. Mine are about half and half, so they're extra barbaric. I usually put in a couple olives and some olive juice.

MD: What about beer?
BR: I have a preference for American beers.

MD: A patriot, eh?
BR: Well, Guinness used to be my favorite beer, but I guess I spent too much time in England and drank it too often.

MD: I drank my first Guinness in Glasgow. It was very nearly a religious experience.
BR: A girl I used to go out with was roommates in college with a member of the Guinness family. Every week or so she was shipped a crate of the stuff.

MD: That's got to be one of the more deeply embedded male fantasies-marrying a Guinness heiress.
BR: Oh yeah.

MD: What do you think of the local microbrews?
BR: Haven't really tried any.

MD: Why not?
BR: Well, I know all these people who go out of their way to pay six dollars for a glass of beer. It'd be terrible to get into the habit where you felt you required that level of discrimination to get a little buzz going.

MD: Wisdom! During the average day, how much do you drink?
BR: In the evening I'll drink some beers and martinis, I don't know how much.

MD: Three or four?
BR: Oh, more than that.

MD: Ever find yourself going through periods where you drink an excessive amount-and you know it's an excessive amount-but you continue anyway?
BR: You know, it never seems excessive to me. It never seems to affect what I'm doing, though every once in a while when I'm drinking hard liquor too many days in a row, there's a certain point where I have to lay off for a while. It goes back and forth. I just had this girlfriend who hated it when I drank, so I've been drinking pretty constantly since she left.

MD: Naturally. What sort of music do you prefer to drink to?
BR: Well, I have a lot of Jackie Gleason records. He did one called The Lover's Portfolio: Music For Sippin', Dancin' and Romancin'. It comes in a little briefcase and has this booklet that describes how to mix the cocktails you're supposed to drink as you listen to each song-it's the perfect recipe for an evening of romance and seduction. The music creates the mood and the two people get drunk and if they're still standing by the end of the second record, presumably something will happen.

MD: Jackie Gleason, swinger.
BR: He was a total swinger. In fact, he designed the futuristic house he lived in, it was round and its entire center was a bar, so no matter what room he was in, he was only a few steps from a cocktail.

MD: Genius! Another great alcoholic's contribution to society.
BR: That's right.

MD: Tell me this-what makes a good bar great?
BR: It has to be dark. It should have mirror tiles. An entire wall should be mirror tiles. Black velvet paintings are important.

MD: And booths.
BR: With latticework enclosures. Now that's a great bar.

MD: You meet the strangest, most amazing people in bars. They're refuges for creative insanity.
BR: Tell me about it. Once I'd been up all night drinking in Boulder and I drove back and I kind of felt like shit so I thought, oh hell, I'll go to the Lion's Lair and have a bloody Mary or two before I go to bed. So I'm sitting at the bar with this guy I'd never seen before. He's this old fat boisterous Russ Meyer type, he's smoking a cigar and he's got this little, much younger guy next to him who he hits with his elbow and says, "Ain't that right?" and the little guy says, "That's right, boss!" And this guy is telling me this story about how most of the gold in the world came from this huge river on the east side of the Andes. The river had been picked clean, but there was this river on the west side that nobody had touched.

MD: Well, of course.
BR: But you can only work the river between ten and twelve thousand feet because above twelve thousand feet you have the Givarro and they'll cut your head off and wear it on their belt and below ten thousand you have piranhas.

MD: Sounds very promising. Did you join the expedition?
BR: I declined. I was just reading a book about this primitive culture they've recently discovered where they have these long, weird drunken bouts and there are fights then everyone makes peace and passes out.

MD: You mean Ireland.
BR: Uh, no. I think it was in New Guinea. Another culture that has a great attitude toward liquor is Japan. They have beer vending machines on the streets. You can buy cans of beer that are the biggest things I've ever seen in my entire life. People work so hard in Japan it's expected of them on the weekends to cut loose and let off steam by absolutely drinking to excess. So you'll be walking down the street in downtown Tokyo and there'll be a business man in a three-piece suit lying on the sidewalk, passed out drunk, and people just walk around him. He doesn't get robbed, nobody steals his shoes, they just leave him alone, thinking this poor fucker has worked so hard all week he deserves this.

MD: Justice, alas.
BR: They also put little cups of sake on graves, in case their dead ancestors get thirsty.

MD: They have religion figured out, those Buddhists.
BR: I brought back some Suntori beer glasses that say, 'A glass full of golden drops, in every drop is a dream, drink your dreams in drops.'

MD: It's wacky, yet somehow beautiful.
BR: I remember in 1980 when I was Honolulu, they used to have what they called Suck Em Up Shows, meaning you paid one price and you could see Don Ho and suck up all the booze you wanted. They had these huge glasses with Don Ho's picture on them and every time your glass was almost empty they'd refill it from these pitchers of Long Island Ice Teas. And all the while Don Ho would walk around saying, "Suck em up, brudder, suck em up!"

MD: A golden era. What's the drunkest you've ever been, or do you remember?
BR: I'd been DJing at the Lion's Lair, drinking the booze they give me all night long, then went with some friends to Rock Island where I got into some Long Island Ice Teas. I have vague memories of throwing the empty glasses across the room, smashing them against the wall. I very nearly got in about a half dozen fights. I was later told the only reason I didn't get kicked out was because the guy who worked security knew who I was and thought I was an 'okay' guy.

MD: The best of times.
BR: I was recently kicked out of a party in Portland. They were celebrating some pagan holiday whose whole theme was a sort of Crowleyian "Do what thou wilt." You were supposed to go there and live out your most innermost desires.

MD: And you were kicked out?
BR: For having too much fun.

MD: What excess could you have committed?
BR: Well, first I walk in and light up a cigar and a woman says, excuse me but you can't smoke in the house. I'm like great, do what thou will, but don't smoke a fucking cigar. So I'm out on the porch with my friends and they come out again and tell us we're too loud.

MD: That's hilarious.
BR: I told them, I'm doing what you people say to do and for it I get chastised. So the entire houseful of people poured onto the lawn and told us to leave. It was like the mob scene from Frankenstein except they didn't have pitchforks and torches.

MD: I think they're a little unclear on the concept of paganism.
BR: I would say.

MD: There's a lot of addictive personalities out there who need chemicals to get away from themselves. Alcohol is legal and the most accessible, so it takes a lot of heat.
BR: It's like Anton LaVey said-everyone needs a soporific. Some people take Valium, some people take heroin, LaVey takes Campari on ice. We all need something to release the tension.

MD: Have you ever tried absinthe?
BR: Well, I don't know if it was real absinthe. These people who made it, I don't know it they just didn't mix together some Everclear and Pernod, then put in some wormwood oil. It was awfully fucking raw, I imagine if you had worms in your stomach it would kill them. It didn't seem very hallucinogenic to me.

MD: I tried a version of it in France. I kept waiting for some Hemingwayesque revelation to hit me. Instead I got crazy drunk.
BR: That reminds me of a story about Aldous Huxley. Every time he sniffed some inhalant he'd discover the meaning of life and he'd swear to remember and tell everyone about it. Of course, as the effects wore off he'd lose grasp of it. So he decides, goddammit, next time I'm going to write it down and lock it in my drawer and when I am of clear mind I'm going to read it and make it known to the entire world. So the next time he writes it down, the meaning of all life and existence, and locks it in his desk. When the inhalant wears off he unlocks the desk, takes out the paper and discovers that he'd scrawled, 'The entire universe smells like turpentine.'

MD: Well, of course. That's the advantage of alcohol. Unlike other drugs, it is an end unto itself. It feeds you euphoria for a couple hours then has the good grace to hammer you unconscious, while other drugs force you stay up all night wondering just what the hell are you doing with your miserable life.
BR: I have this gag picture of a witch. Beneath it is says, This is what she looks like sober. Then you turn it upside down and the witch becomes a beautiful princess and it says, This is what she looks like twelve beers later.

MD: That's the gift of drink. It lets you see beauty in everything.
BR: There's this Moroccan bar on Colfax that serves this amazing wine drink, it's three or four different kinds of wines, layered, and you drink it with a straw. The first layer is real dry, then it gets sweeter and fruitier until you reach the bottom. It's absolutely fucking amazing.

MD: Those Moroccans, they've got it figured out. You can tell a lot about a society by its drinking rituals.
BR: Oh, sure. In North Beach there's this Italian place where you can order espresso with fernet branca, this really hardcore Italian liqueur. Italians drink it after their meals and it's supposed to, uh-

MD: Make you crazy?
BR: No, it's supposed to aid your digestion. Very harsh stuff-if you smell it before you drink it you don't want to put it in your mouth.

MD: Thankfully, as civilized creatures, we've learned to override those base animal instincts.
BR: Right. In Europe you have a couple glasses of wine with a meal and you're normal, here you have a couple glasses of wine with a meal and you're an alcoholic. I also found it culturally interesting that in a McDonald's in Paris you can get wine with your Big Mac, but in a McDonald's in Hamburg you can get beer.

MD: And in America you get a big fucking Coke.
BR: Exactly.

MD: Europe is much more lax with its attitude toward drinking. In America there are all these draconian laws to make sure the average man doesn't go wild with liquor, and because of that, we have a problem with alcohol.
BR: It's so weird. When it comes to drinking, our government is much more totalitarian than actual totalitarian governments, because they think they know what's best for the average person.

MD: The self-righteous bastards. The American Medical Association has only recently admitted the benefits of two to three ounces of alcohol per day, information that they've been suppressing for decades. And now a new British study suggests up to six drinks a day may be good for you.
BR: A couple drinks serves to get me out of the house. If I didn't go out to the Lion's Lair or wherever, I'd be a recluse. It's a real motivater. I get more ambitious when I drink, you get full of life, all these good ideas start coming and you want to do them right now.

MD: Imagine a world without alcohol. I suppose they'd have to legalize marijuana.
BR: It seems like they'd prefer pot to be the drug of choice, because it makes people passive instead of outgoing. It's ideal for social control.

MD: Despite the legalities, I'd say alcohol is considered a much greater evil than marijuana.
BR: Oh, sure. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to nag me, she'd say, oh Boyd, do you have to drink every night? And I'd say, I like to drink, I love to drink, and what's wrong with that, I don't get hangovers, show me one problem that it's caused in my life. Then she'd say, you just seem different when you're drunk. And I'd say, that's because you're nagging me. She was a reformed alcoholic, of course.

MD: They're the worst.
BR: I find it hard to trust people who don't drink.

MD: And that's the bottom line.
BR: Absolutely.