Good Vibrations Magazine

Good Vibrations is happy to welcome Joanne Cachapero to the GV Weekly! Joanne is our newest Featured Writer, sharing her exciting interviews and conversations with the stars of adult films. Make sure to look for more Porn Star XXXposure articles in the next few weeks.In this installment, Joanne talks to Kurt Lockwood, star of over 400 movies, including Chemistry, and Britney Rears 3.

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For every fifty girls at the Adult Entertainment Expo, held annually in Las Vegas, you might find one or two male performers signing for fans. With the exception of the GayVN section of the Expo, male performers on the straight side don’t get much attention – unless you’re Ron Jeremy, whose daily appearances attract long lines to the Metro Interactive booth. But at this year’s Expo, across the aisle from Metro, Kurt Lockwood was definitely holding his own. Casually perched on a chair in front of a giant blow-up for LA Vice, a movie he directed and starred in for SexZ Pictures, Lockwood is utterly confident in his role as a crown prince of porno. His image of the rocker bad-boy with a triple-X repertoire is portrayed in smoldering, sideway glances from behind his dark, Hollywood-style glasses and a knowing smile. His hair is unruly. Bare-chested under a vest and wearing a pair of worn-out jeans, his body is compact and cut, tattooed and tan. The sexual vibe coming off of him is definite and masculine; go a little deeper and you find a sense of emotional complexity.

One by one, both female and male fans ask for autographs and Lockwood knows the drill; leaning forward to talk to each fan, so that they can hear over the blaring techno music, posing for photos.

With over 400 titles to his credit, Lockwood has worked his way to recognition, first as a performer and, lately, as a director. He’s worked with the biggest names, including Belladonna in Evil Angel’s Manhandled and Cock Happy. Lockwood also appeared in Nina Hartley’s Guide to Younger Men and Older Women for Adam&Eve. At Vivid, Lockwood had a role in alt-master Eon McKai’s Neu Wave Hookers and also starred in Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry, a wildly popular flick that took the Best Gonzo Release at this year’s AVN Awards.

At SexZ, he’s honing his skills as a director and has produced a handful of releases, including his latest, Lords of Doggy-Style Town, which co-stars alt-darlings Presley Maddox, Charlotte Stokely and Riley Mason. His movies included original music composed and performed by Lockwood’s band, the Porn City Punks.

During a break from the action on the Expo floor, Lockwood sat and ate a sandwich – and talked to Good Vibrations about Elvis, hell and Henry David Thoreau.

Good Vibrations: In a previous interview you said you used to do Elvis impersonations for your family…
Kurt Lockwood: I did indeed…

GV: Have you always been a performer?
KL: Yes, in that I always craved the attention, always as a child. I’ve always loved expressing myself, be it in song – or later on, through other means. I just loved to sing when I was a kid and I really loved Elvis.

GV: It was because of your mom, right?
KL: My mom was a huge oldies fan – well, it wasn’t oldies for her. It was the music she grew up with. But I used to always hear the Everly Brothers, Righteous Brothers, all the brothers (laughing) – all the brother groups. And Peggy Lee. My mom loved all that 50s stuff, like “Leader of the Pack.” We had an old 8-track that had “Runaround Sue” on it… (lightly singing) “… Put your head on my shoulder…”

I learned all these old songs through this 8-track that she had, and then she had another one that was Elvis. I used to do Elvis impersonations to get the attention of the family, you know…

GV: Obviously, you’re very musically inclined. I was at the XFanz party [Kurt played the web site launch party in Hollywood with his band, accompanied by back-up singer/porn stars Sunny Lane and Nicki Hunter] and watched you put on a pretty rip-roaring set. Actually quite a contrast between his acoustic set Dave Navarro put on that night, compared to your full-blown rock…
KL: (Being facetious) You mean, when he opened for me?

GV: You came to LA to become a musician, so how did you end up in adult?
KL: You mean, what did you do to get in? I was touring as a guitar player with Dee Dee Ramone. Dee Dee died of a heroin overdose and I didn’t have a job anymore. We were just about to leave for Sweden. My girlfriend at the time was a dancer at Jumbo’s Clown Room, where Courtney Love danced in Hollywood. She (his girlfriend) got approached by the guy who was DJing, as a matter of fact. He was our weed dealer at the time. And he said, ‘I have some friends over at Fallen Angel – do you want to do a couple of scenes?’ We ended up working for them – we did a couple of scenes and ended up breaking up. I got a call a couple of weeks later and it was them, asking if we wanted to do another scene, and I said, ‘We’re not together anymore…’ And they said, ‘Well, what about you? Do you want to work?’ And I had already done a few scenes. I was already out there and I wasn’t seeing anybody, so I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’ Then, the first year in the business, I made six-figures. That was 2002, I think, because this is my fifth year. So, here I am – 1200 scenes later, five years later, two AVN Awards so far…

GV: Do you see very much difference between the music industry and the adult industry?
KL: No. One’s mainstream and one’s not…

GV: That’s the obvious difference…
KL: But from that comes everything else that is different, you know what I mean?

GV: Do you think so?
KL: Well, if you’re asking the difference between a porn star and a rock star – the women are paid to fuck me in porn. They want to fuck the rock stars that they’re fans of, so… that’s one way it’s different. The money is a better for the artist, I guess, in the record business. But they’re both just as sleazy. They’re just as stab-you-in-the-back.

GV: You’ve been in the business for five years already. Are you thinking of staying in long term or are you hoping to use it as a stepping stone?
KL: Man, I’d love for it to be a stepping stone, but you’ve got to be a realist – if this is what I end up being – a director. I’ll probably perform for another couple of years. I want to have kids and I don’t want to be performing when I have kids. So, I’ll probably just perform for another couple of years and then I’ll just direct.

GV: If you had the opportunity to go back to being a professional musician, would you do that?
KL: Absolutely. Music has always been my first love. It’s totally my passion.

GV: When you confronted Stephen Baldwin, what was that like? You were at the Rainbow… did you get the impression that it was a set-up or did you kind of run into each other? [Lockwood debated religion with Baldwin in an episode of his short-lived reality show, “Brother Baldwin,” aired in March 2006.]
KL: They told me, go ahead – go have dinner. He was going to drop by so, I guess in that sense it was set-up. But we didn’t talk about what we were going to talk about before. We were just going to meet…

GV: Did you get the impression that Baldwin had any idea what he was talking about?
KL: Well, somewhere in there, he believes what he’s doing. But it seemed to me, that it just seemed an excuse to get on TV. I said to him, I challenged him and said, ‘If you’re interested in God and everything, then why are you here, talking to a porn star on the Sunset Strip, in Hollywood, instead of building a school in the Sudan or Kenya? Is it because it’s more glamorous to talk to me on Sunset Blvd? Because it makes for better TV?’ He couldn’t name the Ten Commandments. He couldn’t name the Seven Deadly Sins, and I just told him – we were having a discourse, and they were rolling their eyes and huffing and puffing. And I said, ‘You know what? Hold on – we can exchange ideas here without – we can disagree without being disagreeable.’ And I said, ‘You know, in my heaven, you guys are going to Hell for being intolerant.’ I asked him, ‘Do you think Jews are going to Hell?’ and he wouldn’t answer me. I said, ‘Do you think gays are going to Hell?’ and he wouldn’t answer me. So I said, ‘Well, that’s not following the teachings of Jesus as I read the Bible. What about the whole thing about being accepting of other people’s faiths, and live and let live?’

GV: Are you a religious person or spiritual?
KL: I’m a very spiritual person. I was raised Irish Catholic, but I’m not a practicing Catholic at all. I like the pageantry and the ritual grandeur of it all. But I think organized religion pretty much is an outdated concept. If it works for you, great. But when it gets to the point they’re using it to legislate laws, based on other people’s beliefs, then it’s going too far and getting a little scary.

GV: In terms of you being a director and performer, you’re not afraid to push limits. You had strap-on sex in “LA Vice” and you have a gay male fanbase…
KL: (Laughing) Is that who all these guys are coming up and asking for autographs?

GV: Well, the gay market is pretty under-served by straight male performers, many of whom are still unwilling to acknowledge they even have gay fans…
KL: Oh, I think they’re serving themselves just fine. I mean, are you speaking of “straight” fetish? That’s kind of an interesting fetish, isn’t it? That forbidden fruit kind of thing?

GV: Well, it’s roughly equivalent to a straight guy getting the hots for a lesbian, or even a straight girl that has a hot gay friend and fantasizes about being able to turn him. It seems like a natural fantasy for most people… when it comes to gay men, I think the mainstream industry ignores them, as well as ignoring the women’s market. How do you feel about that? Do you think that the rank-and-file of mainstream porn is really pretty vanilla and conservative?
KL: It’s an old boy network. They’ve survived the transition from video to DVD, but they’re not surviving from DVD to VOD. Women are becoming a much, much stronger force in the market share. When you take out the whole shame factor that the woman doesn’t have to go into the sleazy store with the guys in trench coats. When your sexual desires are only known between you and your credit card, it opens up a lot of markets, as far as women buying a lot more porn and the stigma is fading away. When I was a kid, the first time you saw a naked woman was in dad’s Playboy collection. Today, kids see naked women on the Internet at a much younger age. And it’s not just a naked woman – it’s every conceivable fetish that there is. From being with horses to piss, and everything else that you can see on the Internet for free at anytime. There are a lot less stigmas. It’s not as rigid as it was.

GV: Are you wanting to bring that into the work that you do?
KL: I think I’m more reflective of what’s already going on, rather than anything that I’m doing myself.

GV: What do you hear from the female fans?
KL: Go on my MySpace.

GV: Do they say what they like?
KL: They really gush. My female fans are very sweet. They write these really long fantasies about me and post them on their MySpace, sex fantasies they’ve had about me. They’re nice, very sweet and respectful. That market share – I write to them, when I reply, and tell them, ‘My industry doesn’t believe that you exist…’ But a lot of that has to do with; they don’t want to look at the guys in the business. They just want to look at us as meat sticks, puppets and necessary evils, which sort of adds to the bandwagon-esque attitude.

GV: Do you think that’s changing?
KL: Well, money changes everything and their dollar is just as green as anybody else’s. If the gay guys want to buy straight porn for their fetish or whatever they want, and if the women can get over whatever was keeping the market share from being there is the first place. I mean, 90% of my website members are gay men and 10% are women…

GV: What would be your dream project?
KL: I’d like to do something like Interview with a Vampire. Something very period, with lots of drama. I just came back from Spain and there are so many great, old, medieval streets and alleyways and it would be so great to shoot a spy story or vampire story because the location really just lends itself.

GV: What qualities do you find attractive in a woman?
KL: Smart. Funny. A good kisser. She has to have a zest for life and a curiosity for the world around her. Passion is important to me – passion for love, sex, food, wine. ‘To suck the marrow from life,’ as Henry David Thoreau put it.

For more information about Kurt Lockwood, visit his Myspace page or his official web site: www.myspace.com/kurtlockwood and www.kurtlockwood.com.