Ultimately, the tapes are legible. And, once your ear adjusts to the situation, wonderfully personal. These are workers, craftspeople, artists, taking time out from their day to share their current worries, considerations and plans. They speak, not so much as a performer providing entertainment at a microphone for a “personal moment” during a concert or appearance, but people with a job sharing how they got there, and where they are going.
No the 1975 interview tape with Henry Winkler.
With Happy Days now in its third season, Winkler has been given co-starring status in the series with Ron Howard. Fonz-mania, years away from famously “jumping the shark”, has him in stadiums with 25,000 people cheering for him. Under any measurement, he is experiencing super-stardom, with the sky the limit.
But in this tape, Winkler is special database picture of humility. He talks about how nobody keeps the throne for long, how it can all disappear overnight, and what steps he takes to mentally prepare for that change. He fears typecasting (which turned out to be a legitimate concern in the 1980s) and opens his sketched-out plans for what to do about that. Through it all, he’s an artist who cares about his art, and is doing his best to keep a level head through a gauntlet of hyperbolic fame.
It’s worth nothing that our obsession with celebrity means that many of the basic facts about these interviewees is known – where they were in May of 1975, or what the actual name of a production they were working on became. We have a literal deluge of knowledge about their marriages, divorces, places of residence. From these known facts, we can surmise a lot about what these tapes are talking about. If only this were the case with so many other cultures, now-lost places or people.
This collection would already be hours of insight and materials, but there’s just a little bit more.