INTERLUDE

Buffy Sainte-Marie
on fame

I’m surprised I get any credit. I really do count my blessings. With the way publicity engines work—we know how come the same face is on every magazine at the same time. It’s all an inside job. Showbiz is an inside job. There’s only so much space and everybody’s competing for that two-inch column in Rolling Stone. They might like you as an artist, but they really like the fact that the record company you are with has fourteen other artists. You’re not going to get much say and it’s going to get boiled down to the lowest common denominator that would reach the most people. And there’s a certain kind of boneheaded logic to that. Most people are governed by business. Those of us who are not governed by business are very few. And if you’re not governed by business, you may be considered unbuyable, suspect, a loose cannon. In Hollywood you certainly are, and certainly in the record business. If you’re a certain kind of artist, people like Clive Davis are going to come and get you and they’ll just propel you. And if you’re not, if you’re a different kind of artist, if you are somehow outside the system so that you’re not part of the social life of meetings and deals, you’re going to get left out.