Eros Zine editor Thomas S. Roche writes:

“Forrest Black is best known as the Creative Director of Blue Blood, a network of sites that showcases gorgeous chicks in explicit gothic, punk, well-armed and counterculture erotica. More recently, Blue Blood has launched BlueBlood.net, a source for community where freaks of many stripes can post on everything from politics to music to sex to travel.

Born into a hippie household in Northern California, he’s lived since in the DC area and Atlanta, and now lives and works in Hollyweird, where he hits the cool parties and meets some of the world’s freakiest and hottest chicks to pose for him and Amelia G. We caught up with Forrest at the recent West Hollywood Book Fair for a chat about the Hells Angels and well-armed women.”

The interview kicks off with:

Eros Zine: OK, let’s go way back to the beginning: Where did you grow up — and how do you think it influenced your choice of career, and your attitude toward the industry?

Forrest Black: I was born in Northern California, in a room full of candles, incense, and revolutionaries. It was in a beautiful home with thirteen black cats and the ghost of the previous owner. The property had previously been a boys camp which had been converted by my parents into the sort of hub of my Father’s business. He was the leader and sort of project manager of what was later described as one of the largest drug smuggling operations of the time. They had planes and trucks crossing borders North, West, East and South. Among many other things, he was a major supplier of Ergot to the famous LSD houses of psychedelic era San Francisco, and he believed in what he was doing on a profoundly spiritual level. My Mother was a model and an artist and is one of the most beautiful loving people the world could ever know. So, I kind of grew up with radicals, revolutionaries, and rock stars. We were very close friends with the Grateful Dead and one of my earliest memories was going to the Oakland Cow Palace with several busses chartered by the Hells Angels to go see the Barnum and Bailey Circus. I went to kindergarten with a Free Sonny Barger shirt on.

Growing up surrounded by all that clearly instilled a certain libertine perspective and appreciation for counterculture philosophy, art, and politics that is so deeply ingrained in me, I can’t imagine who I would be without it. Blue Blood was never really a career choice for me, it’s deeper than that. So, some of the trends in adult industry to use some of the labels and terminology of current counterculture in their bid for a certain cool credibility or whatever can occasionally get under my skin, but I am aware that it’s not something that needs to be taken too seriously.

Eros Zine: BB’s tagline is “the trade mag of cool,” and you’re known for having a lot of fans and supporters in the music industry, especially where you might most expect ‘em — goth, metal, industrial, etc. Back in the print days, the most radical thing about BB was that it totally blended the cultures of rock ‘n’ roll, horror/sci-fi/fantasy/noir, BDSM, and porn. It was kind of a great big orgy of all the things you and your friends were into. Now that BB’s long since made the move (like just about everyone else) onto the web, how much is that still true? Are you able to incorporate into BB every part of entertainment and culture that you dig, or are there ways in which it’s harder to make that connection now that BB and its associated properties are online?

Forrest Black: Some of the original objective with Blue Blood was to celebrate all the things that were good and beautiful and enjoyable and meaningful from within the context of a counterculture lifestyle. The various scenes we were involved in, or had visibility to, and in many cases grew up with, were full of interesting eclectic creative people, none of whom were textbook examples of one narrow cultural buzzword or another. But there was a certain commonality of experience and perspective, and we felt like we understood it well enough to create a publication that seemed to color outside the lines but made perfect sense to the right kind of people and quickly became a powerful tastemaker across the board.

Casting that wide a net, collecting up the coolest gems from the worlds of music, literature, street fashion, gaming, art, and pop culture, with an eye to expressing what was good and sharing what was quality with our audience has always been an immense undertaking. In some ways the internet has helped and in some ways it’s been a bit of a challenge. I love being able to run as many pictures as I like from a great photo shoot, no longer being limited by page count and format constraints. I can even post video to compliment the layout as well. But, on the entertainment writing side, it’s possible to become so micro-niche specific these days that it becomes very difficult to know sort of what level to stay at. For example, what once was an entertaining little 150 word bit on a certain industrial fetish esthetic now has seven to ten active blogs and communities dedicated to just that.

To deal with transitioning to the sort of unlimited depth of the internet format, Blue Blood has kind of gone two directions online. On the one hand, like you mentioned, we have a lot of sites, each of which has it’s own more specific focus. While on the other hand, the central sites, like BlueBlood.net are in many ways more focused on sharing the essential unifying ideas of our counterculture as well as building a community of mature diversely opinionated free thinkers.

Eros Zine: How did you get involved with Blue Blood the print magazine? How early in the life of the mag was it? Were you involved with its predecessor BLT? . . .

You all will just have to pop over to Eros Zine to read the whole thing. It is a really extensive and interesting interview. It takes a talent like Thomas Roche’s to get Forrest Black really talking, but he has a lot of interesting things to say. There is also a photo gallery of some of Forrest Black’s and my photography. Be sure to click on the header graphic when you get to Eros Zine, in order to see the whole thing. Blue Blood hotties featured in the sexy spread include, in alphabetical order, Dana DeArmond, Darenzia, Eva Klench, Jax, Justine Joli, Kellie LaPlegua, Michelle Aston, Miso, Miss Conduct, Nikki Vega, Roxy Contin, Sara X, Scar 13, Stephanie Slaughter, Sun Karma, Superna, Verotika, Vima, and Voltaire. Please check it all out. Thanks so much for the support, Eros Zine and Thomas!

I see it as, not only a given, but maybe even a goal that things I enjoy in a fringe environment will be picked up by the larger society. The problems come when the overculture, in the process of co-opting something cool, tries to destroy the naturally existing subculture and the people most dedicated to that culture, in order to replace it all with something more easily managed and controlled. The problems come when the marketing shifts from spin to bald-faced lies. The problems come when no one appreciates art without a backstory and the market becomes used to the perfection of fake backstory. It seems like modern press is often more comfortable presenting a tidy and wholly false PR tall tale than presenting something real and true. Part of the reason for this is that modern audiences are often more comfortable reading tidy and wholly false PR tall tales. Real life tends to be more complicated and harder to get your head around.

I could like Avril Lavigne if she were presented as essentially a cute blonde actress in a larger movie. Instead, her managers insult everyone’s intelligence by getting a stylist to put Avril in a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and having her publicist tell the world the actress is inspired by David Bowie (but neglecting to tell the girl playing the precocious punk songstress role that Bowie does not rhyme with Maui.) Just try and find music magazine press presenting anything remotely true about the teamwork creation of Avril Lavigne. I don’t know if the magazines fear lack of access to stars their audiences want to read about or if they fear legal reprisals or if it is all just some sort of gentlemen’s agreement, but certain specific pieces of truth have more trouble getting out there as overculture chews up subculture.

I’ve been debating with myself whether or not to mention what got edited out of the most recent interview Eros Zine did with yours truly. I appreciate what Eros Zine does for a variety of scenes and I adore EZ’s editor Thomas Roche who did the interview. And I very much appreciate the support (and fun times!) both have given to both me and Blue Blood over the years. I’ve decided to mention part of what was expurgated because I feel like this one small piece was important. Before I do, however, I want to make it very clear that publications such as Rolling Stone and the LA Weekly, with presumably larger legal budgets, have also cut pieces about the world of supposed altporn apparently due to legal concerns. So it is not unusual that Eros Zine’s legal department insisted on cutting a number of comments. (I promised Thomas I would be clear that it was legal and not editorial who required the cuts.) Journalists always want to know my opinion about adult video and the so-called altporn sites I’m supposed to consider competitive. But apparently what I have to say is just too dangerous to actually print.

Assuming that Eros Zine’s lawyers are essentially sensible, I just want to post for posterity the portion which was cut which contained shoutouts to people who deserve some credit. The rest can remain on the cutting room floor for now.

Some of the directors who might object to the current shameless pretension that punk art porn was just invented are Gregory Dark, David Aaron Clark, Nick Zedd, Justice Howard, Michael Ninn, Antonio Passolini, Stephen Sayadian, Richard Kern, and I’m really just scratching the surface with that list. (VCA and Vivid will be trying to get them all under exclusive contract by this time tomorrow. If they want to thank me for the suggestions, they can send checks payable to Blue Blood at 8033 Sunset Blvd #4500, West Hollywood, CA 90046. Or show me some quality product. Screeners are accepted at that address as well. My mind is open and I’m still a journalist.)

I worried about being potentially helpful to outsider corporations by giving shoutouts to people who deserve them, but I decided that I wanted to take the high road because I think it makes one a better person to give credit where it is due. Unfortunately, the legal folks worried about my commentary on my concerns about said corporations using my shoutouts as free consulting.

The biggest challenge of having sort of imperialist types come into a community is, not just to keep them from pushing out the native peoples, but also to keep the native peoples from simply becoming assimilated by the invaders. I’m certainly not immune, although I guess I’ve got more of a rebel/revolutionary mentality than many. I don’t think anyone is immune. (I just came from visiting a Native American art history museum, so please forgive the analogies.) I’m not personally what anyone would consider left wing and I definitely don’t believe cashing a check from a large corporation is intrinsically bad.

Full disclosure: Hustler owns VCA. I’ve not only worked for Hustler, but I’ve stated in public and in writing on numerous occasions that I felt they were the best of the big adult publishing houses, all of which I have done projects for. Vivid does not, to the best of my knowledge, do magazines, so I’ve never worked with them, but there are plenty of photos floating around the net featuring yours truly drinking and eating with with people who work at both Hustler and Vivid. I really like some of those people and think they are good folks.

I’m not sure precisely where one ought to draw the line, but I definitely think it should be drawn before invaders get to assume control of our opportunities, re-write history, and take away our language. There is nothing wrong with doing a lucrative gig for a large corporation. So much the better if the gig is something fun and interesting. But there really ought to be some wiggle room between accepting some money and accepting total annihilation of one’s self-actualization, culture, and ideals. I guess I’m just an optimist.