This interview by Brantley Bardin was published on the January 1997 issue of the American magazine Detail, with two pictures of the Sixties. 

Legend-with-an-attitude Nina Simone breaks her silence. And you'd better listen. 

Is it true that nothing irks you more than being labeled a jazz singer, albeit one of the greatest? 

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. That's why I don't like the term "jazz," and Duke Ellington didn't either - it's a term that's simply used to identify black people. 

As in the late '50s, when you became a star and were compared to Billie Holiday? 

Yeah--what an insult! 

An insult not because she wasn't a great artist but because-- 

Because she was a drug addict! They only compared me to her because we were both black - they never compared me to Maria Callas, and I'm more of a diva like her than anybody else. 

Really? How so? 

She was tempestuous. She was a complete one-of-a-kind and she studied her music more than anyone else in her generation. She could make the rules and break them whenever she pleased, and the world would listen because she was Callas. 

Do you get off on being tempestuous? 

What do you mean, "get off"? That's just the way I am. 

Actually, it's hard to compare you to anybody. 

Well, thank you. 

You studied to be a classical musician, but instead became the High Priestess of Soul. Though you've introduced such classics as "House of the Rising Sun," "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," and "Lilac Wine" during forty-years-and-counting reign, you don't much like show business. 

Can't stand it! I like being onstage, but when it comes to show business itself and the pirates that run it, no, I don't like it at all. 

You feel you've been ripped off 

Yes, sir! Completely ripped off. I've never been paid all royalties for the five hundred songs I've composed. 

How did that happen? 

Obviously you're naive about show business. 

In a very un-show-business move, you're famous for berating audiences whose behavior isn't up to your requirements. 

My original plan was to be the first black concert pianist--not a singer--and it never occurred to me that I'd be playing to audiences that were talking and drinking and carrying on when I played the piano. So I felt that if they didn't want to listen, they could go the hell home. 

As a child in Tryon, North Carolina, were you always this though? 

Oh, no. I started off very pure and very innocent and I believed till the last minute that I'd be that concert pianist. It still takes a long time for me to accept the fact that it's never going to happen the way I dreamed it. It's just too late. 

Yeah, but instead you became the legendary "Nina Simone." Didn't you change your original name so your Methodist minister mother wouldn't find out you were working a summer job playing piano in an Atlantic City bar? 

Yes, but I'd rather not go into what my name was. I have two honorary doctorates. I am now professionally and legally know as Dr. Nina Simone. 

Ok, but the story of how you changed it from "Eunice Waymon" is right in your autobiography. 

If you know that, you don't have to ask me. 

Should I be calling you Dr. Simone? 

Well, since we don't know each other... 

Okay, next question, Dr. Simone. In Atlantic City, you developed a wildly iconoclastic style that incorporated pop, Bach, jazz, folk, and even Christmas carols. Were you aware of what a groundbreaking brew that was? 

Yes and no--mainly I did it to pass the time. Because I was hired to play the piano for forty-five minutes out of each hour for six hours a night, and since I hadn't played any popular music before, I had to incorporate jazz and classical motifs into what I was doing, and that developed into the difficult role I'm playing now. I didn't start singing until the manager of the bar told me that just playing wasn't good enough. 

And even though you'd never sung professionally before, you were an immediate hit and got signed to record your first of fifty-one albums. Are you excited about the Rhino anthology of your early-'60s Colpix-label recordings that just came out? 

Well, I didn't know about that. Thanks for telling me. 

You didn't know?! It's kind of a big deal. 

Is it, now? 

Yes, and actually the Verve label recently released another compilation. 

Oh, for God's sake, there are pirates everywhere! 

I'm sure these aren't pirates... I really think you'll get paid. 

Well, I'll know as the checks come in. 

Maybe if you lived in America instead of the south of France, you'd have more knowledge of your current popular resurgence here. 

I don't like America, I never did, and I don't want to go back unless I have to. 

I thought you were going to tour this coming year. Anyway, what do you have against America? 

I think they'll sell themselves, their souls, and their brothers, sisters, and mothers for money. And prejudice there is so insidious and subtle--I've never seen anything like it! It's gotten crazy with so many skinheads, everybody gone mad, bang-bang shot dead--I don't know what's happened to the world. 

Is that why, after all your high-profile civil-rights work in the '60s, you left the U.S. pretty much permanently in the early '70s? 

I left because I didn't feel that black people were going to get their due, and I still don't. 

In the late '60s, your song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" was declared by the Congress of Racial Equality to be the black national anthem. 

Yes, and then black America promptly refused it. 

How so? 

You mean "Why so?" I don't know why--it's just that they're pretty backwards. 

Backwards, hmm... I guess you don't feel much was accomplished in the movement. 

After Martin Luther King and Malcom X got killed, after Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes and Medgar Evers died, and after Stockley Carmichael and Miriam Makeba went to Africa, yes, I felt the movement died. 

So you moved to Africa. How'd you feel when you got there? 

That I was at home. I took off my shoes and walked in the dirt streets, smelled all the smells... They didn't event want me to sing over there, they just wanted me to have a good time! I felt thoroughly at home there. 

So much so that in your book you say that on your third night there, you danced buck naked in a nightclub for two hours. 

(laughs) Yes. I don't particularly like clothes, and when I get a chance to be happy and dance with friends around me, I take them off and I dance. 

And at age sixty-three, do you still do that? 

Well, not here in the south of France. 

You've been married and divorced and had many romances. Do you still get around? 

I had an intense love affair with a Tunisian boy last year, but I don't think I want to get involved for a long time again because he opened me up like a volcano, and it almost put me under. 

I'm happy to hear you have friends, because I recently read a quote of yours that said "I don't like people that much." Why's that? 

Because they're basically undeveloped, stupid, and not very knowledgeable about anything--they don't think for themselves and they're not honest. 

I see. And is the same true for yourself? 

What do you mean? I'm very honest. 

You certainly are. People play your songs when they're feeling bad. What do they hook into? 

I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone. 

How would you like to be remembered? 

I want to be remembered as a diva from beginning to end who never compromised in what she felt about racis and how the world should be, and who to the end of her days consistently stayed the same. 

But isn't life about evolving and changing? 

Not for me. 

his interview by Alison Powell was published on the January 1997 issue of the American magazine Interview, with six pictures. 

You Al Capone, I'm Nina Simone 

What defines a legend often depends less on the breadth of the ouevre or the length of the discography and more on the size of the gasp taken when that person's name is mentioned. More than forty years after her first night playing and singing in an Atlantic City, N.J., bar, Nina Simone is, as she has always been, an artist who begs awed tones and reverent sights. 

Her genius for applying the high art of classical piano to popular forms like the blues and jazz could only have bloomed in a country that, as Walt Whitman said, "containes multitudes." But it couldn't contain Simone, who became so incensed by America's social failings that she left, and has lived much of her adult life abroad. The fire of her response to the 1963 killings of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and four black children in a Birmingham, Ala., church the song 'Mississippi Goddam," gives the truest sense of what drives her: a quest for justice. 

Though she is now something of a recluse, in the age of CD Simone is more accessible than ever. Last fall, Rhino Records released Nina Simone: Anthology: The Colpix Years, a two-CD set that collects tracks from the eight albums Simone recorded between 1959 and 1963. And other reissues appear all the time. Plans are also in the works for a tour of selected dates--her first since 1992--early this year. We spoke to Simone recently by telephone at her villa in the South of France, where she has settled after years of wandering. As billed, she was powerfully candid and full of shocking opinions. Less expected, though, was her warmth and congeniality. She invited us ti visit sometime and sample some of her homegrown raspberries: a perfect hostess. 

ALISON POWELL: In your autobiography [I Put a Spell on You, 1991] it is clear that you are a real perfectionist. How hard are you on yourself when you play? 

NINA SIMONE: I demand perfection in what I do and I practice very hard before I give a concert--sometimes three to six hours a day. And I am particular about the seating of the audience--also about how much money they pay--but most of all where they are seated. If I am going to sing something intimate, who am I going to sing it to? 

AP: Your great innovation was to bring classical music to traditional forms like jazz and the blues. Did you feel at the time that you were doing something profound? 

NS: When I was studying, yes, in that there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have becomed known as a black classical pianist. 

AP: Do you listen to much contemporary music? 

NS: No, I don't like it, and I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping, and even though they are protesting against what we have all protested against--racism im this country--[rappers] have ruined music as far as I'm concerned. 

AP: Do you think the message of rap is getting through? 

NS: Yes, but I don't know what that message is anymore. 

AP: One argument is that the message is destructive 

NS: Well, I think it is too, and what's more, I don't think they can win. There aren't any leaders, honey. I think people are banging their heads against a stone wall. 

AP: Why do you think black leadership has dissipated, id indeed it has? 

NS: Most of the leaders are dead. 

AP: But why do you not see a new generation of inspiring leaders? 

NS: Because their parents didn't teach them anything about history. If they had, we wouldn't need to give this interview. People would know who Lorraine Hansberry was [the author of the 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun], they would know who Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, they would know who Malcom X was, and [they would] get their inspiration from them. 

AP: Don't you think somebody like [filmmaker] Spike Lee can educate his generation? 

NS: Well I think he could, and I think he has up, up to a point, but then have to be people who come after him. 

AP: Do you think communication would be better if the kind of protest music heard in the '60s was still important? 

NS: Yes, and I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going. 

AP: Why not? Do you think your job is done? 

NS: No, no, my job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I don't think you know it, but my song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" is in Chinese. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela. 

AP: Now Mandela, ther's a leader young Americans know about-- 

NS: But he's not close enough to inspire them directly. 

AP: Do you see any elements of the early civil rights movement still at work in the States? 

NS: No, all I see is rap music. 

AP: You've moved around quite a lot and have lived in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. How do you feel about America these days? 

NS: Don't like it, baby. With all the bombings going on, and the terrorism, I don't like it at all. It frightens me. I like being in the South of France. It is very beautiful and we work very hard to keep it that way. We have a huge garden bearing fruit for the winter: peaches, grapes, strawberries, and raspberries. 

AP: You have been very involved with political causes. Are you still? 

NS: Yes, I'm a real rebel with a cause. 

AP: What is it now? 

NS: It's the same one that it's always been and it has to do with the direct equality of my people around the world. 

AP: Do you think the state of race relations in the U.S. is hopeless? 

NS: I think it's hopeless for the majority of black people. I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don't think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die. 

AP: What from? 

NS: From violence and from being poor and trying to survive. I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever. 

AP: So, you think greed id the driving force. 

NS: Yes, greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home. It's no surprise that Michael Jackson, the man that I adore the most in this world, has disappeared from the United STates. I distinctly remember meeting Michael on a plane many years ago when he was little, and I said to him, "Don't let them change you. You're black and you're beautiful." But of course, ha was influenced by his family and everybody else. And I don't mind if you say this, I think that the person who's responsible for Michael's tragedy is Quincy Jones [who co-produced his albums Thriller and Bad]. You can quote me. 

AP: How is he responsible? 

NS: It was Quincy who married a girl from Sweden [Oolah]. And with Quincy with all them white women, poor little Michael didn't know what to do. Michael needed somebody to emulate, and I think he did everything that Quincy Jones told him to do. That is what I believe. 

AP: Does Quincy Jones know you feel this way? 

NS: No, I don't think he knows. 

AP: Well, it's true that interracial marriage is still controversial-- 

NS: From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman. 

AP: Do you agree with that? 

NS: Yes I do. I do not believe in mixing of the races. You can quote me. I don't believe in it and I never have. I've never changed. I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been. I married a white man one time, but he was a creep. 

AP: What do you think is gained by keeping the races separated? 

NS: We can get rid of slavery. 

AP: You mean unify and conquer? 

NS: Yes, but I think it may be too late. Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking. 

AP: You don't think blurring the race lines is good for desegregation? 

NS: Desegregation is a joke. 

AP: But what do you think about Michael Jackson's plastic surgery? 

NS: Oh darling, he is becoming the freak of the century! It's unfortunate, because I love him very much. When you write this, will you put that my sympathies are with him? I adore that kid and I have cried many days when I thought he wasn't going to make it. 

AP: You once introduced your song "Mississippi Goddam" by saying it's a show tune for a show that hadn't been written yet. 

NS: And you want to know what I meant. O.K., I'll tell you. "Mississippi Goddam," to me, is a prophetic tune. I believe that America is going to die, die like flies, just like the song says. That's what I believe, lady. 

AP: Will we be killed or commit suicide? 

NS: C'est la même chose! 

AP: You've often been called an angry performer, an angry songwriter-- 

NS: Let me finish what you're trying to say. I believed that at one time it was possible to change the race problem. I believed that it was possible for Martin Luther King to become president, for Jesse Jackson to become president. But I don't believe that anymore. My anger was fire and I was pushing that all that time, but I'm not angry now. I'm philosophical, and I am happy where I am because I can't change the world. I'm getting older and I have no business being out there preaching like I did. 

AP: Have you heard any of these women who have made it O.K. to be angry in pop music? 

NS: No, I heard one girl singing, "You Al Capone, I'm Nina Simone." 

AP: You're paraphrasing Lauryn Hill of the Fugees [in "Ready or Not"]. Did you like it that she used your name? 

NS: Yes, I just wish she had sung one of my songs. 

AP: I don't know if anyone could sing one of your songs. 

NS: Oh my God! Dear child, I've got hundreds of them. 

AP: I simply meant from the vocal standpoint, these songs belong to you. 

NS: But who cares? There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were. 

AP: Do you have a lover at the moment? 

NS: No, but I had a very intensive love affair from 1994 to 1995. It was like a volcano, so I don't want that anymore for a while. 

AP: Too much lava? 

NS: Yes, too much lava. 

AP: What do you look for in a man? What does he have to give you? 

NS: I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat--a sailboat. [AP laughs] I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second 

AP: How old were you when you first saw the sea? 

NS: Twenty-three, I think. I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel. Listen, how soon are we finished? Dinner is getting ready, and I've had some Harveys Bristol Cream. 

AP: We're nearly done. Is there anything else you'd like to say? 

NS: All I really want to say is I look forward to meeting Nelson Mandela. This may be a dream, but I'll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.