MR: Are you excited about LeBron joining the Lakers? JG: No, because I’m an NBA fan. I don’t root specifically for the Lakers. I’ve been attending all of the Lakers games since I moved to Los Angeles in 1962. Over the years, time and time again, I have seen the Lakers obtain a super star who was previously playing for another team. The Lakers have had too much of an advantage and it’s not fair. I would like to see LeBron play for a team that hasn’t been able to enjoy championships. And besides all of that, I have to deal with the so-called “Los Angeles basketball fans” who really aren’t basketball fans at all because they haven’t been coming to the games for five years. They don’t care about seeing the other teams. All they care about is rooting for the Lakers when they’re a good team. When they’re not a good team, they have no interest in coming to the games. Saturday night, for the home opener of the Lakers, it was just as I expected. I saw people there who I haven’t seen for five years. I just want things to be fair and I resent fair-weather fans who don’t appreciate basketball. MR: How did you get interested in basketball? JG: I grew up in Milwaukee and I was playing basketball from the age of six. At the age of ten, I started going to games. I was really interested in the NBA at an early age. I was offered an opportunity to be the statistician for the Milwaukee Hawks (now the Atlanta Hawks) at age 15. This cemented my attachment during a time when there was little interest in the NBA. The tickets only cost maybe five or ten dollars and not many people showed up. MR: What was it like growing up in Milwaukee? Did you always know you wanted to move to California? JG: When I was growing up in Milwaukee, I had never visited California. When it came time to choose a college to go to, because of my good scholastic record in high school, I was attracted to the Ivy League schools. At the same time, a family friend had talked to me about going to Stanford University in California. I toured the Ivy League schools and talked to the students there. None of them seemed very happy. When I told them I was considering Stanford, they said, “You should go to Stanford.” Sight unseen, I went to Stanford. Once I had a taste of California, I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Milwaukee. MR: Do you have any favorite memories of events that have taken place in this house? JG: As far as events go, one of the best ones was Rihanna’s birthday party about three years ago. It was pretty much the debut of Club James, which I have been working on for many years prior to that. It was a small intimate party filled with celebrities including Mick Jagger who had never been here before. Another party
that stands out in my mind was well before the construction of Club James. What was notable about that party was that Jack Nicholson arrived, but before he arrived, he had been standing in the middle of Cielo drive on the approach to my house… directing traffic in a huge traffic jam with a drink in his hand. MR: How did the creation of Club James come about? JG: The house had been used for many events over the years and as time went on, the space became more and more famous and there was an increased demand for events. The living room is not big enough to hold sizeable events. It would help if the weather was good for people to go out to the pool but that was always a risky situation during the winter months. I knew I wanted to create more space for events. Along with that, I had been a frequent nightclub-goer all my life, not just in Los Angeles, but all over the world. I always had visions in my mind of how I would design my own nightclub, so the motivation was there for both practical reasons and also for creative reasons. When I was able to buy the house next door, my initial thought was to tear down the house and build a tennis court, which was also something I always wanted to have. I’ve been a tennis player all my life. When it came time to design the tennis court, I realized the possibility existed to have a nightclub space underneath the tennis court. MR: Is this your only house? JG: I still own my family’s residence in Milwaukee that I grew up in but that’s the only other house I own. Initially, when my mother passed away, I thought I would continue my habit of making periodic trips to Milwaukee, which I had been doing to visit her. As it turns out, I haven’t been doing that but I have held onto the house partly for emotional reasons and partly because I still have a lot of possessions in the house and I don’t want to take the trouble of shipping them out here… MR: I read that you don’t believe in marriage. JG: I don’t believe in marriage because the idea of a contractual arrangement to keep people together is very unappealing to me. I’ve always believed in being with someone because I want to be with that person, not because of some marital agreement. In addition to that, I have been around long enough to know that people change over the years and the idea of a lifetime commitment to someone doesn’t really make sense to me unless it’s on a voluntary basis. I’ve seen my interests in women evolve over long periods of time and my relationships with women evolving from a physical attraction to a friendship. I’ve remained close friends with my girlfriends from the past but the romance is not there anymore so I feel that I’ve definitely done the right thing by never getting married. I’m an only child and I’ve been used to being alone. L E FA I R MA G A Z I NE | 9 7
