- [Interviewer] Guy.
- Yes?
- [Interviewer] We're here in Venice.
You're homeless. Tell me about it.
- Well, I'm a musician, so I've lived almost everywhere
in the United States, except for California,
and the last two years up in Montana.
Well, the last year, we had wildfires.
The whole place was ringed by mountains.
The mountains were on fire, all summer long,
and it was just, like, suffocating smoke.
Then it went from that to freezing rain,
and then I got evicted out of my apartment
for supposedly playing my guitar too loud.
I just said, you know, I'm gonna get on the Amtrak,
and it goes all the way to LA,
and we're gonna check out LA,
and see what it's all about.
So here I am.
- [Interviewer] Oh my God.
And that was a year ago.
- Yeah, that was a year ago.
- [Interviewer] And you were telling me you're disabled
and can't work.
- Yeah, I have a laundry list of, you know,
fortunately, none, not one is totally life threatening,
but, when it's all put together,
it adds up to where, you know.
I'm 61 now and I don't have quite the energy
that I had when I was, you know,
in my twenties and thirties or whatever, so...
- [Interviewer] Well, you get a disability check,
so that helps.
- Yes, I do, and it helps immensely.
Otherwise, I don't know what, I mean...
- [Interviewer] But it's still not enough for housing.
- No, it's not.
I mean, you can maybe find a...
Yeah, it's not enough.
- [Interviewer] Oh no, you can't find anything!
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] It ain't, there's nothing here.
- Yeah.
Actually, it's like, even across the USA,
you better have at least 700 bucks, at least.
- [Interviewer] Or more.
- That's just, I mean.
I don't know.
I'm sure there's places that are cheaper,
but I don't know about 'em.
- [Interviewer] I'd say it's bad everywhere.
- Yeah. Right.
- [Interviewer] But you were saying you don't have ID.
- No.
I have a birth certificate, I have my medical records,
I have my bank card, I have prescriptions.
But if I wanted to leave town, I couldn't,
because you've got to have hard ID
to do anything these days, and I think
it's a little ridiculous that, you know,
people are complaining about homeless people here,
and homeless people there.
Well, some of us don't have IDs
and can't even leave town if we wanted to.
- [Interviewer] Well now, no ID just hurts in many ways..
I mean, gosh, there's so much that you can't do.
Is any of the homeless services helping you?
- I've been to Saint Joe's five times now.
The last time, it was Friday.
I went there on a Thursday, got up, went to Saint Joe's,
and the guy said, come back tomorrow,
we're not doing orientation today.
So I come back the next day, and they said,
we're not doing it today.
And I'm looking at 'em, I go, brother,
you just told me to come back today yesterday,
this same guy.
He's kind of laughing, he's kind of chuckling about it.
- [Interviewer] So Saint Joe's is one of the better places.
- Yeah, I guess.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know what they're...
The bottom line--
- [Interviewer] But you shouldn't get that runaround.
- The bottom line...
Yeah, that's just, you know, administrative problem there
or whatever, but, I mean, what does it take...
All right, I have a valid Montana ID, right?
Well, I don't have it.
That got stolen, along with my birth certificate,
and social, everything got stolen.
- [Interviewer] It got stolen while you were here?
- Yeah.
To me, it's a little strange that they can pinpoint you
via your cell phone within two feet by GPS
as to where you're at,
but yet they can't get into the open,
government-issued picture thing from Montana,
and say, yeah, this is the dude.
I got a replacement birth certificate.
Yeah, this is the guy, right here.
Let's print him out something.
He's a homeless guy, and he wants to leave town,
and we all want that.
- [Interviewer] Well you should ask Saint Joseph, man.
Keep going back.
It's a good place.
They'll help you get an ID.
- Good. I hope so.
Sometimes, you get in one of these things,
and you just have to beat the dead horse.
- [Interviewer] That's the only way to survive homelessness.
The system is so broken.
You know how they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease?
- Right.
- [Interviewer] And I hate to tell people that,
but you just have to keep knocking and knocking
and screaming and screaming.
Because we don't make it easy
for somebody to get out of homelessness.
- I know.
Something has got to be done.
This is a nationwide problem.
There's also a huge problem with mental illness.
There needs to be literally a walk-in clinic.
I'm not saying that the police should force someone
to go to a mental health clinic,
but maybe suggest it,
and then if they're still running around crazy,
if they're constantly running around crazy,
then something probably has to be done with them.
- [Interviewer] There's a lot of mental illness out here.
And there's no help for the people that want it.
- No, there's not.
Me, myself, I have a sleeping disorder.
When I got my ID and my medication got stolen,
I slept 10 hours in 2 months.
- [Interviewer] Oh my God.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] Yeah, sleep deprivation is huge out here.
People don't understand.
Because you fall asleep, you're vulnerable,
you get your stuff stolen.
- Well, yeah.
And this has never happened before,
but it was like the most torturous thing
that I've ever gone through,
but I couldn't get my medicine
because it's really expensive.
And so, one night, I got up,
packed my stuff up and went sleepwalking,
and they found me out on Rose.
I'm, like, miles away.
I don't know exactly what happened,
but the cops brought me back.
I was sleeping with a couple other guys,
and they said, do you know this guy?
And they said, yeah.
And they said, okay, so they let me out.
- [Interviewer] So what's your future like?
- Actually, it's not looking all that bad right now.
I do have a band put together.
I'm working on getting places to play.
I have had a certain amount of success in my life
with the music I've played.
- [Interviewer] What instrument do you play?
- I play guitar and sing.
I used to play with Jimi Hendrix's drummer.
His name was Buddy Miles.
He's from Omaha, Nebraska, so that's how I know him.
I backed up Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult
and Judas Priest and all that stuff.
I'm not a mega-rich rock star, but that was never my goal
in the end in the first place.
I just wanted to be able to play really good music,
and get paid, and have good times, you know.
- [Interviewer] I used to make my living playing music.
Back in the day.
- I just purchased this killer amplifier.
Portable.
- [Interviewer] Where do you keep your gear?
- I have a friend that's got a car.
But this is what I'm thinking about right now,
because I have to pick up this amp in a day or two.
And I'm figuring out how am I going to tote it around.
But I've got several different ideas on that.
The good thing about it is, when I was up in Montana,
I was by myself in my room by myself for all day long.
I really actually have a lot of friends
and acquaintances here. I mean a lot of them.
It's like they're all over the place.
And that's really nice, because I'm not involved
in a relationship or anything like that,
so it's nice to have some guys that you can hang out with,
and shoot the bull and what have you.
- [Interviewer] It's tangible social interaction.
It's so important.
- Yeah, it is.
It really is.
- [Interviewer] So, if you had three wishes,
what would they be?
- If I had three wishes...
I wish, for number one, that people would...
I'm not saying turn your life over to God
or go Bible-thumping, whatever,
but I wish they would pay a little bit of attention
to the 10 Commandments.
We could do with a little less stealing,
a little less of all of the things.
Can you imagine what kind of a world
LA would be if you could leave your bag
sitting somewhere on the beach, or anywhere.
If you could do that and not worry about it being stolen.
Imagine that kind of world.
Now that sounds like a good deal to me.
- [Interviewer] Wish number two?
- Wish number two.
I hope for peace and prosperity
for all my brothers and sisters.
- [Interviewer] Awesome.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] I'll take some of that.
(laughs)
I'll take some of that.
And wish number three.
- Wish number three.
Boy.
Wish number three, I wish that wish one
and wish two would actually come true.
How's that sound?
- [Interviewer] Great.
But you didn't wish anything for yourself.
- Well, I've been told in so many words
that God's not a big fan of selfish people.
From what I've been told.
Now I'm not going to go into details about that,
'cause you'll think I'm stone cold crazy.
- [Interviewer] I've been told the same thing,
and I agree with you.
Well, Guy, thank you very much for talking to me.
- It was my pleasure.
(bright electronic music)