When Rami Sharkey, a.k.a. Ballzack, asked me if he could interview Biff Rose, I wondered what shenanigans could’ve led him to discover someone with the name “Biff Rose.” In retrospect, it’s embarrassing that I didn’t already know the enigmatic nature of Rose, who was born in New Orleans and is attached to some of the biggest names in show business. The singer-songwriter got his start as a standup comedian in the early ‘60s (a road Ballzack would travel down over thirty years later) and wrote sketch comedy with the all-time-great comedian George Carlin. David Bowie recorded “Fill Your Heart,” a song Rose co-wrote with Paul Williams, on 1971’s Hunky Dory, after the song had already been released by another star of the day, Tiny Tim. Rose’s contributions to big-time musicians didn’t stop there (Pat Boone and John Denver both covered Rose-written songs) and he not only performed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show but the classic Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and American Bandstand.
After Rose recorded Roast Beef in 1978, little was heard from him publicly until his work was re-released in 2005, though he kept busy by creating several websites and multimedia work.
Rose’s website and current work is, to put it lightly, controversial. He’s incorporated spoken word and rap into his music and uses to racial stereotypes in his art. One of his websites, jewmanity.com, is but one of his projects that plays with words to make a point. Some have labeled him an anti-Semite and/or racist. Rose denies that. It’s hard to believe that someone featured on online videos teaching African American kids how to play piano is racist, but that’s the paradox of Biff Rose.
After agreeing to chat with Sharkey via e-mail, Rose suggested that we start the print version right then an there, so we’re going to bring you the entire conversation from start to finish and in a different format that our interviews are normally in. The bolded parts are Sharkey’s e-mails to Biff, the non-bolded Rose’s replies. It’s sparsely edited to keep intact Rose’s unique blend of stream of consciousness thinking and metaphorical speaking, so there are misspellings, jabs at other New Orleans publications and Rose’s frank anecdotes of New Orleans, New York and celebrity.
