J.D. Slater - The Man Behind the Music - Part 2…

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And the interview continues...

GPS – Yeah, I hear what you’re saying on that one for sure. You obviously have been involved in the adult industry for a number of years…you started in front of the camera…how many years did you do that?

JD – About 15 all together.

GPS – Any regrets or did you find a high point?

JD – There were a bunch of movies that I’d rather not have been in…quite frankly, I did 165 movies, so I’ve been in more turkeys than Pepperidge Farms stuffing. But it was all part of an experience. It was all part of a learning experience.

GPS – Who was the best director that you worked with?

JD – Wakefield Pool.

GPS – What did you like about his style?

JD – I only got to work with Wakefield once. The next would be Christopher Rage. But, Wakefield and I were just, I dunno, just buddies. And the piece I did for 1 through 3 was a 17 minute monologue. It was the first time that anyone ever tried to do something like that and it was the first safe sex movie, really. Wakefield just said, “I’ve always wanted to someone to do this and you’re the only one I could think of to do it,” and we just sat down and we filmed it.

Christopher Rage was amazing because I probably learned the most from Rage. Rage was so wildly experimental. The gutsiest artist that I ever knew because he would try to do experiments…some of them failed miserably, quite honestly…but succeed or fail, he put it out. Every six weeks there was a release and he would just crank them out and out it would go and some of them would fail miserably and some of them were great. And he learned something from each one and as a result, you learned something from each one. He knew how to deal with cast members, how to find their inner dirty old boy or whatever…and how to reignite that. And also not to be afraid to try stuff that people haven’t done. Very formula…and nobody did any experimentation of any type.

Wakefield did a little, but for the most part, everyone tried to do a Hollywood type movie, if they had the budgets for it. Rage said, “No, screw that. Just go out find something new and do something that you feel.” And I had enough theatre background with lighting and sound that, when I like my movies, I don’t do video lighting, I do stage lighting.

GPS – It makes a difference.

JD – When I design the sets, I’m designing stage sets, I’m not designing a video set. I design them with that in mind and the dramatic impact of the things going on around them. It’s why my stuff looks different.

GPS – Obviously there is a time in your life when you went through some drama. When you spent some time in the hospital…was that a turning point for you?

JD – Oh god, yes. Up to that point, I had…After years and years and years of being at the top of my field, I’d become a raging jack-ass…I was completely full of myself and not treating people around me the best one could. I was angry at the entire world. I developed a serious chemical dependency…

GPS – What was your favorite chemical?

JD – At that point, it was meth.

GPS – Okay! Well, you survived that! That’s pretty damn amazing!

JD – Thank God I came down with all those diseases, I didn’t have a choice! One day I was a speed freak…I was shooting a 16th a day just to maintain.

GPS – How long ago were you doing that? I mean, for how long did you do that?

JD – Years. I did it for years. And then, the next day, I was in the hospital and they were taking one testicle out, and I’ve got TB and HIV, and I’ve got maybe 18 months to live.

GPS – Was the cancer a family thing or…

JD – No, no. Mine was a result of steroid abuse. Back then, in the early ‘80s they were still experimenting with a lot of the steroids and stuff that they put us on…I was going to doctors…I wasn’t buying bootleg stuff. They really didn’t know the long term effects of all this crap.

GPS – Well, the good news is that you didn’t end up looking like a Russian woman!

JD – No, no! Thank God! Thank God! And they didn’t really effect me the way they effected other people. It was really hard for me to put on weight when I was younger. It wasn’t until after I turned 40 where I could actually put on weight.

GPS –So, you made it through the hospital and you came through to the other side…and you had an awakening in that period…

JD – Well, after the cancer op, whenever you have an operation, either your hands or your crotch, which is where all your nerve groupings end up, there’s like a 1 in 100,000 chance that both of the nerve groupings end up fused. Which doesn’t affect you much until 2 of the opposite nerve grouping fire off at the same time and then, I would have effectively what would seem like a grand mal-seizer.

GPS – And you were 1 in 100,000?

JD – The full effect of it is more like 1 in a quarter million.

GPS – You really need to be picking lotto numbers.

JD – Yeah, I know. I started getting them and at one point, I started getting them every 45 minutes. You get the seizure and you go out, and when you came back…it’s like when you’re rebooting your computer, except than when you when you came back online, initially you were in safe mode. And I couldn’t speak, wouldn’t be able to walk. And slowly you would come back…but, when they started happening every 45 minutes, the computer stopped resetting. After about 9 months of that, I lost the ability to speak and walk. Internally, inside my head, I could still do every thing, I just couldn’t get the body to do it. When people would talk to me, I would try to respond my best, and the right thoughts would come to my head, I just couldn’t get them out of my mouth.

(NOTE: If any of you have wondered if a relative or friend was cognitive when in a coma, or had mental capacity when paralyzed or incapable of speech, this is very enlightening.)

GPS – You think about the elderly who have Alzheimer’s and you wonder if in their head everything’s fine and they just can’t get it out. Having come back to consciousness from something like that, what was it like?

JD – That’s where everything changed because for about a year, I was in that condition…a little over a year I was in that condition. All I had was the internal conversation. And, I couldn’t even watch television because halfway through a show, I’d go out halfway through a show and that’d always piss me off. I started talking to myself about what you had done with your life, and who you treated well and who you treated badly. All these people were around me, some of whom I had not treated the best, were suddenly around me every day, and taking care of me…taking me to the bathroom and feeding me and all this other stuff…and um, I realized the selflessness of their act. And I was not necessarily the nicest to them…and um, it changed absolutely everything. It changed how I looked at money. It changed how I looked at people. It changed how I looked at myself. It changed how I looked at what I do for a living. It changed the way I looked at music.

GPS – Did you ever feel suicidal?

JD – Constantly. Constantly.

GPS – It’s not you could have done anything about it… That must have been frustrating.

JD – Yeah, I couldn’t have done anything about it…that was the big, Catholic joke. (laughs) If there was ever a time where God would have forgiven me for suicide, but I couldn’t pull it together to do it.

The biblical irony of me losing a testicles not lost on me. In many ways, I think I was over-testosteroned as a young man. Losing a testicle was the only thing that aided me in making it to 50! It slowed me down just enough to come down to normal human level.

GPS– So, you came out on the other side, so to speak…walked into the light and stepped out and here you are again…how many years ago was that?

JD – About 15 years ago.

GPS – So, I guess the expression for people who are long term survivors of anything…they say that we’re living on “borrowed time,” how do you feel about that? What’s it done for you in your life?

JD – I don’t think it’s borrowed at all. We’re obviously supposed to be here for something. I hadn’t reached anywhere near my potential…I still don’t think I’ve reached my full potential,…but I’m no where near my potential on anything yet.

GPS – Do you think you didn’t want to go or God didn’t want you back?

JD – There came a very, very unique sort of moment where I was rushed into the hospital at one point, I’d had an abscess that had to be taken care of right away. And, they rushed me into the hospital and it was very odd…I was rushed to the hospital every 4 or 5 weeks for a while there, so it wasn’t a big deal. But, I got into the hospital this one time, and I knew from the moment they checked me in, I was going to die. This was it. Something was going to happen during the operation. I was going to die. And there was no doubt in my mind at all…it wasn’t like fear, I was just very, very sure of it. And I picked up the phone and I started calling friends to say, “Goodbye.” Without sounding alarmist because I didn’t want them freaking out. I just wanted to have a final conversation with a few people. And called a bunch of friends and they came into the room…this is at San Francisco General…they came into the room and wheeled me out of the room, and wheeled me to one of the elevator banks, and somebody else was going to take me down to the operating room.

So, I’m lying on the gurney and I’m facing this big, full, floor window that was facing up Hill, and the fog comes in over the hill. And I’m sitting there watching the fog roll over the hill and I get tapped on the shoulder and I look up and there’s this woman standing next to me and she goes, “That’s the carpet to go home if you want to now!”

And I said, “Excuse me?”

And she goes, “That the carpet to go home if you want to go now. If not, you can stay, but it’s going to be a long walk back. But you have to decide now.”

And I don’t know why, but I decided that I wanted to stay, so she said, “Okay!” and walked away.

And sure enough during the operation, I had two heart attacks. And then when I came to in the recovery room, I came to and there’s a nurse standing over me, laughing hysterically. And the doctor’s standing right next to here looking really pissed. And I asked the nurse, “Why are you laughing?

“You’ve been sitting there singing for the last half hour?”

I said, “What have I been singing?”

And she said, “Depeche Mode, the song about I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors, but God has a sick sense of humor.”

GPS – So, the person standing beside you prior to going into the operation?

JD – Oh, she was an angel! I knew everybody who worked in that damn hospital, I was in the hospital so much, everyone knew me, and I knew everyone there. And no, they were right, it was a long, long, long, way back.

GPS – Do you think everybody gets that option?

JD – I don’t know. I don’t know. Obviously not. Obviously there are just points where they just take you. But, it’s odd because I also believe in reincarnation.

GPS – Why did you want to stay?

JD – I wasn’t done. I knew I wasn’t done. There was something else there that I needed to do.

GPS – Do you think you’ve achieved that yet or do you still feel that you’re an instrument of some greater power and it’s just flowing as time passes?

JD – Yeah, that. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve achieved the ultimate purpose, whatever that is. I don’t know if there is an ultimate purpose, I think part of it might just be to help move yourself along and moving other people along. That I’m an instrument not only in my own life, but in other people’s.

GPS – Now, prior to your medical situation, you said you had grown to a place where you weren’t the generous person that you’ve become…and in recent years, you’ve certainly been a very generous gift of music and probably that extends to many people whose lives you’ve touched. When it’s all said and done, hang up your hat, how do you want to be remembered? Or, what accomplishment do you want to be known for?

JD – Bringing people to think of life on a bigger scale. Think of life in a bigger scale. Think of music in a bigger scale. Relate, think of their sexuality more freely and in a more positive space. Just being one of those points in people’s lives where the world could have gone either way and it went the better way because of me.

GPS – Right. I’ve been listening so closely to you as opposed to not listening to you and not thinking of the next question, which is, I get distracted to say the least. So, we were both raised Catholics …what do you consider yourself now?

JD – I think of myself as a religious man. I don’t think of myself, well, I guess I do still think of myself as a Catholic, in some odd sort of way, but not in the Catholic Church, Catholic. I respect…my own religious beliefs take different pieces from everything. From Buddhist to Hindu to American Indian to Shinto to Confusiousism to Taoism…they all sort of blend.

GPS – What do you think of the things that have been going on in the Middle East with the whole Muslim deal? I mean, you studied Theology…

JD – I think it’s the way people are being educated and brainwashed. They’re getting interpretations of the religion as opposed to the religion. It’s what the Catholic church did and what the Protestant church did…they had the original manuscripts and they decided, “Okay, this translation doesn’t work for us, so we’re going to change it to this.”

The good thing about going to Jesuit schools as many as I did, as opposed to the rest of the Catholic church, they were not afraid to point out the things that didn’t jive between gospels. More than following their beliefs on what they thought it was, it opened me up to the fact that it was all interpretational. That God it there and it’s your interpretation of him that affects you life.

GPS – Aside from the Nazi discipline of going to private schools, one of the things I noticed about the Jesuits was that they taught you to think as opposed to taught you to memorize.

JD – Yeah, most definitely. And they told you to figure it out on your own. Which just stumped a bunch of kids, but I enjoyed that. My whole adult life has been basically creating jobs and positions that didn’t exist before I came along and turning them into careers.

GPS – You bring up an interesting thing there at the heart of creativity and at the heart of openness and spirituality…if you look at so many of the people on this planet who are really following and fitting into the grand scheme of things, do you think it would be to their advantage to find that creative spark inside of them, to choose what they’re doing instead of being automated robots?

JD – Yeah, a perfect example would be Bono. Before there was Bono, there wasn’t one of those. There were politically active musicians, but they always stayed within their political stitch/jargon. They didn’t communicate with the whole audience or the whole world. He created his own style of music, he created his own style of politics, he’s created very own philosophy for people to interpret any way they want to and that really didn’t exist before him.

GPS – When did “Naked” get released?

JD – “Naked” was released on Valentine’s Day. It was Get “Naked” for Valentine’s Day.

GPS - Looking back over the library of your creativity, going to the very beginning to where you are today, how do you feel about the growth of your music and the direction it’s gone?

JD – I could never have seen the direction it’s going in, I attribute a lot of that to my business partner, Chris Ward, who time and time again has come to me for specific projects and gone, “Okay, you’re going to write this.” Like with “Raiders,” he said I want orchestration, we want authentic tribal inserts. I was thinking, “Okay, I’ve never done full orchestrations, I’ve never done that." Chris said, “No, no, no, you can do this!” And I started writing a lot of the Latin stuff that I write, but before that, I never approached that genre. I’ve listened to a lot of Latin music, but I haven’t really written any. It was the good people down at Our World’s who handed me a soundtrack for a movie called “Zoot Suits” and I said, “Well, what do you want?” And they said, “We want 1940’s Jazz.” And I was like, “Ooh-Kay.”

They said, “No, no, no! We think you can do it!”

And I sat down and did it. With Arabesque, once again Chris said…when we first started it, we were basing it on the original Rudolph Valentino movies, the Sheik in front of the Sheik, which the soundtrack to Scheherazade. Originally, we thought we’d sort of do an updated Scheherazade, and then we said, “No, no, no. That’d be hokey.”

And if we didn’t want to be hokey, we had to use instruments authentic to the region. I sat down for months learning the instruments of the regions, what were the right percussive instruments, how were they played? I need to know first how an instrument is played before I can actually write for it.

I don’t have to be able to play it myself, per se, but I need to be able to watch somebody else play it and figure out in the playing of it, what is it that makes it make certain sounds.

Chris kept telling me, “You can do this! You can do this! You can do this!”

And I’d hand him something and he’s go, “That’s nice, but that’s not the best you can do.”

And would hand it back to me. And for the rest of the afternoon, I’d be like, “That son of a bitch!”

GPS – I think to have somebody in your life that can push you to stretch like that is great.

JD – Incredibly supportive. There isn’t another studio in the world that has an in-house composer. Once again, a position that we invented for me. And it makes a lot of difference in the movies, Chris and I know each other so well, that now when I write for his stuff, he rarely listens to it before he lays it in and he just knows that it’s going to be right. We think the same way on a lot of levels. The places where we diverge, we appreciate the other’s divergence. “Oh, that’s interesting, let’s go that way!” So, it’s been a very, very interesting partnership.

GPS – You guys met how many years ago?

JD – About 8 1/2 years ago.

GPS – Did you get a sense that something was going to happen at that point?

JD – Immediately, I knew that he was the most talented filmmaker I had ever met and I wanted to work with him. And we just got along really, really well from the get-go. Became almost inseparable for the first year and a half…we were really joined at the hip and learned a lot about each other. We went through a lot of stuff with each other…went through break-ups with boyfriends, and in my particular case, a number of health crisis’s, all sorts of stuff. The sort of stuff that either bonds you for life or spins you wildly apart. And we chose to bond.

GPS – So, what’s next?

JD – Haven’t a clue. I would like to go onto…I’m having a great deal of fun with Raging Stallion. Now when I direct…(I stopped directing for a while, but when I came back,) I’ve just done projects I want to do. Once again, the great luxury of having the company and having such a great, supportive group that I work with.

I’m not sure. I want to keep fresh in all of our stuff. We try and portray sex in a very positive light and as a life-affirming thing. The last couple of years, we’ve been concentrating heavily on making it multi-national and having one’s porn more greater reflect the actual world as opposed to just sort of the old-fashioned white kids by the pool type of thing. It’s why our movies now have wildly international casts. We cast from all over the world…we don’t see color…I don’t think that there’s anybody else is that does that. We just look at people. Slowly but surely we are affecting most of the industry that way.

GPS – Absolutely! What do you think about the…statistically in sales right now, the bareback movies are doing so incredibly well.

JD – And they have since they’ve hit, yeah.

GPS – What do you think about that morally and ethically?

JD - I don’t like to make moral judgments for other people. We won’t put it out ourselves, because we think that is a judgment thing you need to make on your own.

And I know for a fact that that stuff I put in early movies, sort of kinky things that I put in early movies, and I thought I demonstrated well in the movie, I would find out years later that someone in East Oshkosh had tried it and done it wrong and injured somebody.

But, I learned from a very early point that what you put up on the screen, people are going to try to copy. And, they’re not going to think about it because you did it and they trust you. And I’m sort of a trusted figure in erotica and they tend to follow what I do and I don’t want to be the guy that they point to after someone’s been bare backing for a while and then turns positive and goes well, “Slater said that it was okay.” I don’t want to be that guy…maybe that’s just being selfish on my part, or else we’d all be selfish and be making a lot more money.

Raging Stallion would be making approximately 10 times what we’re making if we’d do bareback. We would be having this conversation on my private island, with some monkey servants.

It would be very posh, but we just refuse to go there and we’re getting a lot of crap for it! I can’t tell you the amount of people that complain that there’s no bareback and then they ask about your personal life and you have to tell them that that’s personal!

GPS – Right…that’s a decision 2 partner’s make privately.

JD – Exactly! As much as you’d like for me to be able to give you all the answers, I think my job is much more about asking the right questions.

GPS – Very, very true. The other thing on the Internet, of course, there are certain sites you can go to and be exposed to XXX content without any AVS or child protection what so ever. Your website, of course, is responsible and it shows enough, but if you want more, then you’ve got to…

JD – You have to jump a couple of fences to get there…

GPS – Yeah, and it’s not like the ultimate answer…none of us have found that in any of our websites, but you could make a lot more money if you just had an open door there and let anyone in.

JD – Oh, god yeah! But then, if you let everyone in, then you let in pedophiles, you let in abusive personalities, you let in people who are fucked up on 1,001 reasons and then you are then validating their “fucked-upness.” People are screwed up sexually for a number of reasons, and they have to find their own way out of it. I don’t consider it my job to fix everybody’s problems…but I would consider it a disservice to my audience if I validated myself in my heart was negative behavior.

GPS – What do you think about the gay community now, I mean the White Parties, Black Parties, and the dynamic growth of Meth use?

JD – (laughing) It’s kind of hard for me to point fingers on this one…

GPS – Well, you’ve been to hell and back…

JD – But it’s…I mean, the original White parties and Black parties of which I was a part of in NY, were much different affairs than they are now. And the sad thing I see with the meth use and the massive drug use is how it’s become about the drugs and not about the event. The event is the background for taking the drugs as opposed to the drugs being an incidental to the event. In cases where you try to pick up somebody or chat with somebody on like and their first line is, “Do you PNP?” And that’s where I cut off the conversation. I’m like, “Okay, if that’s your first question…and you’re not interested in either me or the sex…”

GPS – Mm-huh…you just want somebody to party with…

JD – Yeah, you want somebody to do drugs with and elevate yourself with…I’m not that guy.

GPS – What do you think is ultimately going to happen with this culture with…it’s gonna get worse or it’s gonna get better. Where do you see it evolving?

JD – Over the past 50 years, you and I have probably seen the same thing…the perpetual door has to swing one way or the other to eventually get back to the center and correct itself. I think we’re hitting such a point where, with the meth problem and things like that, where it actually has hit it’s breaking point. I think people are beginning to be turned off by it. People are beginning to get turned off by the vast commercialization of it are trying to find some other way around. Dictating whatever highs they want to get instead of using meth or whatever drugs are being used currently.

GPS – Let’s talk about some silly stuff…do you have any pets?

JD – No. Unfortunately, no. My work schedule is such that won’t allow me…I live in a rent-controlled apartment in SF. I have a 2-bedroom apartment in the Castro that I pay $500 a month for.

GPS – I hate you…

JD – (laughs) It’s a tiny 2-bedroom!

GPS – Yeah, yeah, yeah…that makes me feel so much better!

JD – (laughs) They don’t allow pets, so I wouldn’t do anything to screw that up. But, my work schedule is so insane. I mean some days I’ll be on set for 14 to 16 hours. Or I’m on a road trip with the company and I’m gone for a week or 2 weeks and I don’t think it’d be fair. I would tend to have a bulldog. I want a bulldog more than anything in the world!

GPS – Well, it’ll happen. Any quirky hobbies or things that you’re into collecting?

JD – Not really. My quirky hobbies sort of work their way into my work. And the past couple of years especially we’ve been producing at such an incredible high level of output that it doesn’t really leave a lot of room for anything else, that’s why I’m not in a relationship right now.

GPS – Do you create on your guitar or keyboard?

JD – I haven’t touched an instrument for quite a while. I do everything on the computer. Everything is set up on computer.

GPS – Do you have a keyboard for your computer?

JD – Yeah.

GPS – What program do you use?

JD – Most of my stuff is written on AcidPro. I have an old pair of KLHs that I use for monitoring. Everything is mixed on them. Ultimately people listen to my music through their television speaker. So, it has to sound good on the crappiest speaker I can find and if I can make it sound good on there, I know it’s good on the other stuff.

GPS – Do you have a favorite movie that you’ve seen recently?

JD – Domino. Incredible, visual way of telling a story, the use of different photographic mediums and color and the editing style and the other stuff they did with it I thought was quite amazing.

GPS – Do you have a favorite female movie star or classic movie or director?

JD – Love Hitchcock, Coppola, Scorsese, Tarantino…

GPS – Tarantino’s quite a lunatic, I love him.

JD – Yeah, his willingness just to go for it and let it find the most extreme end of things is really interesting.

GPS – I think he pushed the boundaries with each film or project that he does that he gives directors another 5 years of techniques to catch up on.

JD – Exactly, Kill Bill 1 and 2 was, I think, a revelation to everybody.

GPS – Absolutely. I was so…my chin was on the ground just from the directorial, I had to see it a second time to see exactly what happened.

JD – Exactly! Love Uma Thurman just ‘cause she’s so smart!

GPS – I’m telling ya, I’d go straight for her.

JD – I would, too! Susan Sarandon. Another movie I really love is Illuminates, which she’s such a genius in. Meryl Streep. I like Colin Farrell a lot.

GPS – These people have an interesting, offbeat look, all of them.

JD – Yeah. They’re real, not a manufactured look, and there’s more personality in that. If you look at the guys we use in our movies, especially in my films, they’re not typical porn star types. And guys that come up to me and ask if they could be in one of my movies, and they’re 6’2 and 245lbs, and perfectly built, I say, “Well, that’s nice, but I get 300 of those a month.” So, let me see you smile…and they go, “What?”

“Let me see you smile!”

I cast on smiles. If they can’t give me that sly, little smirk, then I don’t want to know about them because there’s nothing underneath that 245lbs.

GPS – For me, personally, there are certain TV shows that I appreciate and am almost ashamed that I like them. Are there anything like that out there for you?

JD – I’m wildly devoted to Family Guy. Just because at different points, I am either Stewie or Brian.

GPS – I’m an American Idol fan, I can’t help myself.

JD – I didn’t watch that for a while, I watched too many good people get voted off on bad reasons. And I find that very frustrating, that’s one of the reasons that I sort of, whenever I do music, I abandon all the other things in my life because watched so many wildly talented people, much more talented than I, get passed over and other people that I didn’t consider worthy of picking up my garbage, suddenly becoming stars.

GPS – Yeah. Very strange, isn’t it?

JD – I realized that while talent is an ingredient, it isn’t the thing that sells it. I’ve become…there’s a lot of “it” factor involved and that’s another thing we cast on. People will say, “Why did you cast him, “ we’d say, “Well, ‘the it’ factor.”

They’ll ask, “What’s the ‘It’ factor?”

And we’d say, “We don’t know what it is, but he’s got it.” It’s the intangible. It’s recognizing the spirit within the body.

GPS – I visualize you when you’re writing music that your mind is calculating thousands of things simultaneously; multi-dimensionally

JD – Yeah. I can actually see the music. And it’s very odd… I don’t write around other people because it’s such a…people who watch me do it ask me, “Are you feeling okay?”

I’m going, “Why?”

“Because you’re waving at the air.” They comment

I go, “I’m moving things… Scoring in space."

GPS – I understand all too well.

I'd like to thank JD Slater for his candor, honesty and passion about life. Hopefully, you found this series illuminating. Not only about JD, but in your own self-discovery. Underneath it all, we are all very much the same - searching for our own dream - trying to express our humanity in this life. JD's sharing, for me, is a brave ongoing story that offers hope.

For More Information on JD Slater, go to his site at JDSlater.com.  Part 3 in 3 weeks.

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