Interview: Eric L. Goode
Born in Mississippi and later raised in Phoenix, Eric studied fashion and worked as a warehouse boy, a radio show host, a dresser and accessories buyer to the stars, and an accountant for The Album Network in LA before coming to Barcelona in 1983, where he teaches English and works in films. His passion for astrology started at the age of 14.
I remember one day I was in the library and came across a book that was a combination of astronomy and mythology, signs and things like that. It fascinated me so I started collecting everybody’s birth information for my own personal interest. I spent hours with it and got deeper and deeper into it over the years.
I was a bit of a wild child. I left home at 16, hitch-hiked around California (in the days before you might be picked up by Freddy), and went to LA to study fashion but I became disenchanted with that. I decided I wanted to be famous by the time I was 21.
Armed with the idea from Goethe that there is genius in boldness, I walked into LA’s most famous radio station and asked them for a job. The boss, Shadoe Stevens, asked me what I did so I explained my idea of doing an astrology show in the mornings, where I’d do a reading and take calls. I started on the 12th January…my 21st birthday.
I became quite well known and it was what I was looking for at that time. I attracted lots of wonderful people, but also a lot of nuts! I started being interviewed for eclipses by the TV stations and doing talk shows about astrology, but there came a point where I was getting calls in the middle of the night and I thought: “That’s not what I’m into. I’m not into predicting how to win the lottery or when you’re going to meet your first love.” I had a different orientation.
After moving back to Phoenix for a while, and working at the TV station there, I moved back to LA and in my late 20s, started as a mail boy at The Album Network. When the credit controller quit, I asked the boss if I could have a go. They said “Now Eric…” but I said, “Listen, pay me the same as you pay me as a mail boy for three months, and I’ll do both jobs and then we can talk about a raise.” It was great: we expanded, I met stars like Bryan Adams and I interviewed Stevie Wonder. I used to go to all the concerts in a limousine and had a fabulous apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, a big red sports car and a big salary.
After a few years, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want my claim to be that at the age of 60 I would know every song by every artist, so I decided to pursue another aspiration, which was writing.
I arrived in Madrid on a four-month visa at a time when being gay was the craze. I soon moved to Barcelona because I know a lot of people here, and it was so alive, boisterous and full of vitality.
I loved that the people were so dramatic. I remember a friend having a go at a waiter who told him he couldn’t eat his ice cream in Café de l’Opera. He just threw it on the floor! I had not seen that anywhere else.
Astrology helps give meaning to the things that happen, in a positive way. I come from a nature angle. Science is a hungry beast and wants to be the solution to everything, but there is so much you can’t measure or control. Fifty thousand years of being conscious human beings doesn’t erase three billion years of programming at the cellular level that our selves are accustomed to the earth revolving round the sun.
My favourite place nowadays is my home, although I did use to pay the salaries of quite a few people in the bars! I love the Santa Caterina market, better than the Boqueria. Honest, great people who are above board with you.
I guess my most illuminating moment was realising that one of the most important things is what you have with people, and not anything else. Because then you can sit back and have your memories of what you did together.