Lana Jokel: John, what do you remember of Neil? John Chamberlain: I remember our trip across the country in an old Mercedes in 1962. 1 remember because my old lady was pregnant and I had to get away from her. Nothing much happened, we went to California. We almost made it to Los Angeles, but not in a car-it blew out in Victorville. We took a bus or something. I don't remember. All we ever did was go out and get drunk and bullshit about art. Lana Jokel: What was your relationship with Neil? John Chamberlain: He was my best friend. Things were different when everyone lived within a couple blocks of Max's and you met there every night. It was the same thing every night: you eat too much, you drink too much, you don't move, and then you try to take a girl home at night and not know what to do with her. Lana Jokel: What was his family background? John Chamberlain: His mother had a bar on an Indian reservation. He was brought up there and in Grand Junction. Working in an Indian bar is very difficult actually, you have to learn how to take the cap off a beer bottle. That is all they drink. The only thing I know about his dad is that Neil once said that his dad shot himself in the head with his .22 and the bullet kept going around and around in his head. Neil was also in the Marines and in the Korean war. He came back and started getting interested in art. Lana Jokel: What do you think of Neil's work? John Chamberlain: I haven't seen any of his paintings since before he went to Brazil in the early '80s. So I don't know too much about what he was doing. I had his black painting from about ten years ago, and then he went to real cheerful paintings. I liked the black paintings because they were the blackest black I'd ever seen and it was sort of like "no hope black." It was the most hopeless black you'd ever seen, more hopeless than the shiny black on a black widow spider. After that he did some cheerful Indian pictures, and that's the last I saw of his stuff. I personally felt he had sort of a naive idea of what art was all about although I never said anything or argued. These guys, Larry Poons and Neil, had big ideas about what their stuff was worth it's worth nothing and it's worth everything. Lana Jokel: Would you say that Neil was a man of great integrity? John Chamberlain: Part of the business of being an artist is to be that way. Maybe I don't understand. The idea of being an artist is to be something other people are not, you can afford the conditions that other people can't Each artist has private thoughts that he keeps to himself and it's that insanity that the artist puts out that might get him arrested otherwise. Usually, it's information or knowledge that can be added to human perception. Lana Jokel: Do you'think he cared about success? John Chamberlain: I always thought Neil was successful whether or not he did. It's not something you can convince someone of, I guess. Here you are offering something that nobody knows and you're mad it's not recognized, on the other hand, if it's too easily recognized it must be pretty close to what people already know anyway.