Eccentric musician Swamp Dogg at 82: ‘There is no sympathy for Octogenarians’ | Music

SWamp Dogg has only just stopped seeing monsters. Since he was bought with LSD in the sixties, who also influenced his different view of the left field soul musicThe 82-year-old says that until just a few years ago he could still feel the impact of it. “I was paranoid of crowds and paranoid to be alone,” he says. “I had a high fear and could sit in a room with you and if I looked at you long enough, you would look like a sort of monster.”

For a long period it was only because of the help and support of his deceased wife that he could keep it together. “I didn’t trust, but one person in life, and that was Yvonne,” he says. “I would not do anything without her. She is why I am still alive. Yvonne was my God.” There are moving feelings about her in the same way in the unusual, funny and strange moving new documentary About the Cult artist and his curious world: Swamp Dogg lets his swimming pool paint.

Swamp Dogg is a musician like few others. Part Golden-voted Crooner, partly experimental satirist, partially flat oddball, he has made music that spans Soul, Rock, Country, Disco, R&B and Auto-Tune Boogie. When he grew up in Virginia, he cut his first record when he was only 12 as little Jerry Williams. He did A&R and production work for large labels and then started writing songs for Gene Pitney, Doris Duke and Johnny Paycheck. He was burned out, unfairly treated and frustrated by the industry, as well as chemically changed from his LSD experiences, he rebroeked in 1970 as a swamp Dogg. From that moment on he started a much more single musical process that the Madcap peculiarities of Frank Zappa with a deep love of the old school and the country melt.

Since then he has worked Good iverwas a manager and mentor of the Wreckin ‘Cru of the World Class, with a young Dr DreAnd he has sold novelty records of dogs singing – well, barking – Beatles songs at pets in Spain. His record covers – as he fills himself naked in a gigantic hot dog – are regularly on lists of Worst Album Properties Ever. The album cover until 1971’s Rat on!, Of him who rides on a gigantic white rat, is also painted on the bottom of his swimming pool (hence the name of the film). And there is also a recent cookbook that he has written that he describes as “an idea for 50 years in the making”. If you can kill it, I can cook, it contains soul food recipes such as fried bean bo Diddley.

“I think I feel that I am eccentric,” he says with a smile when he is asked if he agrees with the description that he often follows. “Although I get rid of many things that I know are crazier than a bastard.”

Retelling is something that is not always easy to swamp dogg. In the 1970s he joined Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam Free De Army Tour And he thinks it brings him back in the industry for years. “I am not trying to be that political,” he says. “I am still a bit political, but not so much because it failed a counterproductive. It let me thrown away from electricity records and that is what people encountered to do live interviews with me on radio and television.” Does he regret how he approached that? “I would do the same thing again, but I would do it harder,” he says. “But with more back -up this time. Because I rather called a meeting and nobody showed up for it.”

Despite a turbulent career that has for the most part limited him to the fringes, he has the feeling that he has landed in a good place when it comes to a space from autonomy and idiosyncrasia. He also remains productive and has released three albums for the past five years. “More people seem to know me now than ever before and I still have the feeling that I am cooking,” he says. “Some concerts I play and I see all these people coming in and [there’s that many] It is as if they should think that Snoop Dogg will be here. I love the audience so much. I am so happy to play for them. It ensures that I want to work as a bastard. ‘

So what keeps him so motivated and hard -working at an age in which many, after 70 years in the industry, would like to think of retirement? “Poverty,” he says about it. “I am thinking of poverty and I am getting dizzy. I am in bed to watch television, and suddenly you realize that I have not had money for a few months. That drives me. The thought of being poor, ensures that I want to work because being poor, regardless of how you are. There is no sympathy for Octogenarians.”

One of the truly moving elements about the documentary is the domestic situation he has at home. In a neighborhood in Los Angeles, where they joke that all the porn movies are being shot, he has neighbors such as Johnny Knoxville and Mike Judge who lying past, and he lives with his friends and musical employees Guitar Shorty and Moogstar. “Guitar Shorty came here for a few months and it turned 18,” he says. Swamp Dogg has never charged him a cent. “Because I’ve been there,” he says. “I slept on the banks of people and on their porch and all that kind of shit. I have been all the way to the bottom. But I would always find a way out because I don’t like fun things, even if you can’t afford them.” Such an example of this tendency is illustrated in the film when he was at the height of success and owned nine cars. “I thought the world would be mine,” he reflects on that period.

You get the feeling that the company and the comrading of his friends, band members and housemates have replaced the deep loss about his wife. He agrees before he jokes: “And they never looked like monsters for me”. Unfortunately, Guitar Shorty has since died, together with another friend and employee, John Prine, who also appears in the film. “I think I’m the next,” he says. “But I try to walk a straight line and do the things that keep me healthy and my mind, and my whole being, luckily. I try to eat well, don’t drink, don’t do drugs …” He stops himself. “Damn, you could say I’m boring as a bastard.”

In reality, Swamp Dogg is anything but. And you get the feeling that he is starting to realize that embracing eccentricity and making music purely on his own conditions, while forging a really unique career path, may have paid dividends. “I am happy that I remained faithful to myself,” he says. “And I have a lot of faith in what I do and I want to leave a hell of an inheritance. That is why I have cut so many albums. I will have a chance and hope it works. It seems to work.”