Devendra Banhart: think all the bohemian spirit. Experimental joie de vivre, and wild individualism has been bled out of music. Think again. Lindsay Lohan gets inside the eccentric, ecstatic, and irrepressible mind of one of music's true romantics

Interview, April, 2006 by Lindsay Lohan

DB: My opinion is that this is probably the most hated president that we've ever had.

LL: This is very true.

DB: I don't think that he's evil. I think that he's kind of like a child.

LL: And doesn't know any better?

DB: And is reacting to his ego and to pressure and the expectations that he's trying to meet. He's not actually thinking outside of himself or of human lives, which are being lost every day. I almost worry that saying "Fuck Bush" isn't really the best way to get him to stop. I think it almost fuels the fire. I don't know what the solution is. But I'm really honored to be playing a show that is a bring-our-troops-home rally. As opposed to "Fuck Bush" and "Fuck the war," it's a new kind of sentiment, which has been missing. That, I think, is a more kind of proactive way of ending something. In the past I had this feeling that these are really the dark ages, and I almost went into my own little world and felt that the best way to be political is to try to be unique. I thought the answer was to just make your own things, make your own fucking clothes. As shallow as that may sound, altering your clothes, it seemed like a political thing to me. Then I realized that that was a way of avoiding what was going on on the outside. But if I constantly think about what's going on, I won't be able to eat or make music or do anything, because I'll be paralyzed with fear and sorrow. A couple of months after September 11, I actually got into this phase of wearing turbans and saying "Assalamu'alaikum"--especially when I went to the airport. Because of the way I look, with my beard and stuff, I was in jail for 24 hours with my friend Will.

LL: Why'd you go to jail?

DB: A really, really stupid reason I won't get into.

LL: Okay.

DB: Well, I'll tell you: We tried to build a hut and bought, like, bottles of whiskey and tried to make our own little bar in a hut that fit only two people. But we had had tickets for other things in the past. I was so happy, though, to be in the cell with the inmates as opposed to being outside with the cops, because they all wanted to beat me up because I looked like John Walker Lindh. I think that was his name--the kid from Northern California who was arrested for supplying services to the Taliban. Because of that, I started thinking that I'm getting judged so much by the way I look, and I've never really felt that much, being someone who is so privileged just for being a white male. That hasn't happened to me since high school. Then I could say in my clearly American voice: "You can't judge everyone just by the way they look." That was kind of the message behind it. The racism that the people of Islam have suffered because of this has been so totally undeserved, and to judge them based on the actions of some obsessive extremists is fucked up. I know so many Muslims who are the sweetest people rye ever met.

LL: Did you research this?

DB: Well, I lived a little while in Asilah. It's this town on the northern coast of Morocco and it's mostly Muslim. And I lived in the medina, which is the hard-core local place to live. Everyone there would look at me for a second, then freak out a little bit: "What's this American doing here?" And all l would say is "Assalamu'alaikum" or "wa alai kum assalam," and right then they'd calm down. It's a beautiful, beautiful religion. But it's the extremists that are messing it up. The people that should be hated and feared and targeted are the people that are causing it--but everyone needs to be more informed about who those people are. It just takes perspective to be able to see outside of yourself.