I actually interviewed him back when the Green Album came out. iirc he hadn't done many interviews, but for complicated reasons my interview never ran. This was my favorite exchange (ilx exclusive!!!):
O: You also had leg extension surgery. Now that your legs are the same length, does the world seem more crooked?RC: (laughs) No, everything is much straighter now.
O: How long does the whole, painful process take?
RC: It took 13 months. It’s like this cage that’s all around your leg, screwed in to your bone. It’s basically like having ten arrows shot through your meat, into your bone, and then they stay there for 13 months.
O: But you were all doped up on painkillers.
RC: For the first couple of months I was. But then they try to get you off of them, which is a very sad experience.
O: Supposedly little people consider leg extension surgery tantamount to treason.
RC: Really? Well, actually I would recommend it to anyone whose leg or legs were too short. It’s not easy, but who wants to have a bum leg?
O: Did you ever consider making your legs significantly longer?
RC: You mean one longer than the other one?
O: No, making both of them a lot longer, so that you’d be better at basketball.
RC: No, that wouldn’t be worth it.
O: And this is when you were studying?
RC: It was actually … I think I started the procedure in May, and then started school in September.
O: Did people know who you were at Harvard?
RC: I don’t think so. At least, nobody said anything, not to my face. I had long hair and a beard.
O: So you had long hair, glasses, a beard, and a pinned-up leg, and you just appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared again?
RC: I was definitely the campus freak.
O: For all you know there are people at Harvard treating your absence from academia the same way people treated your absence from music. You know, “whatever happened to that guy?”
RC: (laughs) That’s funny!
O: What did you put on your application? Did you have to write an essay?
RC: Yeah, I wrote an essay, a very negative, depressing essay about how I didn’t like touring, and how I wanted to go back to school. I’m not proud of that essay at all. But they thought it was interesting. There’s a section where you have to list the awards you’ve gotten, right? I got to put, like, MTV’s Alternative Video of the Year, stuff like that. (laughs) Triple platinum award.
O: This must happen all the time.
RC: With another rock star?
O: I read an interview with Duff from Guns ‘N’ Roses, and he said that when it all winded down that he would go to Harvard Law School, because “they love people like me.”
RC: (laughs) Well the thing is, I didn’t go when it was all winding down. I went right at our peak, which was kind of stupid (laughs)
O: It all worked out in the end, but you left just a couple of months shy of graduation.
RC: Yeah.
O: Would you ever go back?
RC: No.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 January 2019 16:02 (five years ago) link