Losin’ His Mind in Detroit Rock City: Gary Graff

By Steven Ward (January 2002)

Gary Graff first earned his reputation in the mid ’80s as the in-house music critic for the Detroit Free Press, a stint that terminated a decade later after he refused to cross a picket line. Since then, Graff has freelanced for a variety of sources, including the New York Times Features Syndicate, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Reuters wire service, Revolver, and Guitar World, where he pens a great column called ‘On the Record.’ That column is particularly worth noting because rock critics supposedly don’t belong in the pages of technical ‘zines like GW. But as Graff himself explains, “[Guitar World] does an intriguing job of straddling the line between being a player’s journal and a general music mag, and I think both parties are more the better for it.”

Graff is also the founding editor of MusicHound Rock, which is accurately subtitled “The Essential Album Guide” (more info here and here).

The Detroit native was kind enough to answer the following e-mail questions.

Steven:   Why rock journalism? Why did you want to make a living writing about rock and roll and was that your plan or did it all happen by accident?

Gary:   I hated and struggled through ninth grade biology, which meant my mother’s desire for a nice, Jewish doctor in the family would never be realized. And I’m only half-joking. But I did get interested in music at a very early age, both as a player and a listener; I have a brother who’s 11 years older than me and was in high school during the mid and late ’60s, so I grew up on a steady diet of Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Doors, etc. I even developed a taste for the Al Kooper-led Blood, Sweat & Tears at an early age, and while my friends’ favorite songs were usually from the latest Disney movie or cartoon show, I favored “Born to Be Wild.” Once I started writing and began eyeballing a career in journalism, I hoped to combine the two interests and kept doing music on the side of whatever else I was doing, including sports, straight news and investigative reporting.

Steven:   You’re a native of Pittsburgh and now live with your family in the Detroit suburbs. Where did you go to college, and is that where you started writing about rock?

Gary:   I got a Bachelor of Journalism degree at the University of Missouri, but I started writing about music in earnest during high school–during the halcyon days of the mid `70s. I wasn’t quite Jeff Spicoli, but I can certainly relate to the gestalt of Dazed and Confused.

Steven:   Do you remember where and when your first piece of rock criticism or writing was published?

Gary:   The Taylor Allderdice Foreword, a monthly for which I also covered the girl’s basketball team (I’m no dummy) and was the ad director. Talk about singing…

Steven:   What rock mags and critics were your favorites to read in your formative years, and why? Was any one rock writer a particular influence on you?

Gary:   I remember that the first rock mag somebody gave me was a Hit Parader, circa 1971 or ’72, with stories about the Who and the Doors, post-Jim Morrison. I flitted between what was around at the time–Rolling Stone, Creem, Circus, Crawdaddy. Rock mags back then seemed to have a broader orientation due to the more monolithic nature to the audience, and things hadn’t really started to segment yet. So the big decision as a reader was to go highbrow or low, serious or funny. I don’t know that any one writer exerted more influence than another, but you had some of the best–Ben Fong-Torres, Cameron Crowe, Dave Marsh, Ben Edmonds, Lester Bangs, all the usual subjects–really hitting their stride at that time. A little later on, Trouser Press was a particularly illuminating read–even if that does make Ira (Robbins) feel like a geezer. ;o)

Steven:   You write for a bunch of newspapers, magazines and web publications. Do you think you could name them all?

Gary:   Is this a test? Or an covert IRS audit? Gawd…The current lineup of regular/frequent outlets includes Reuters, the New York Times Features Syndicate, Guitar World, Revolver, the Oakland Press, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Launch/Launch Radio Networks, CDNow, occasional contributions toHits and BMI Music World…That enough? Dishes are extra, and I don’t do windows.

Steven:   I read your stuff in Guitar World all the time. I think the magazine is the most underrated music magazine coming out of this country. Besides the technical/transcription stuff for guitarists, there are some amazing features written about classic rock and heavy metal artists that you can’t find anywhere else these days. Is that part of the attraction for you when it comes to writing for Guitar World?

Gary:   Guitar World is a great publication with some really fine people who work and write for it, with a strong editorial vision, a real drive for excellence and a consistent hunger to improve, both commercially and qualitatively. It does an intriguing job of straddling the line between being a player’s journal and a general music mag, and I think both parties are more the better for it. It really does transcend the perceived limitations of an instrument-oriented publication and offers plenty of insight to those who don’t know their seven-strings from their 7-11s.

Steven:   I would consider you a “classic rock” writer. Do you agree with that tag, is classic rock your favorite kind of music and what do you think of the amazing popularity of the classic rock radio format?

Gary:   I don’t agree with the part about being a “classic rock writer”; the bulk of what I do is actually newer and younger–whatever we’re calling “alternative,” hip-hop, electronic, Americana. That said, I think I’m not as dismissive of classic rock as some of my peers; I still find a very human drama in musicians who are establishing rock ‘n’ roll as a lifelong career, much the same way country, blues and jazz artists have always been able to do. There are also a great number of readers who maintain loyalties to these bands–and it’s no longer surprising to see lots of young faces in that crowd. Is it all good? Of course not, but there’s some quality within the dreck. And, believe it or not, one of the best concerts I saw this year was the reunited Guess Who, which sounded great and played a set full of hits with real passion. It’s interesting, too, that our definitions of “classic rock” are constantly changing. At this point, after 20 years, is U2 a classic rock band? Is Motley Crue? Def Leppard? R.E.M.? Elvis Costello and the Clash? Ultimately, classic rock is yet another marketing and formatting term rather than a definition for a kind of music. But I think you can miss a lot of very good stories by writing off certain acts merely because of how long they’ve been around.

Steven:   My favorite part of Guitar World is the column “On the Record.” You write that column 95 percent of the time. You talk to musicians and producers about the making of a particular classic rock album. Was that column your idea and do you have a favorite “On the Record” that you have done?

Gary:   ”On the Record” was around before I started doing the bulk of them, but retrospectives are always popular–VH1′s Behind the Music being perhaps the best case in point. It’s interesting that Rolling Stone began its Hall of Fame album series after GW started “On the Record.” At this point in rock’s evolution, it’s good to have these kinds of regular features or big, Mojo-like retrospective take-outs to not only serve the nostalgists but also to give younger fans a sense of history and perspective that will help guide them backwards from their current favorites.

Steven:   From 1982-95, you were the music writer at the Detroit Free Press. Then during the big strike in `95 you would not cross the line and lost your job because of it. Can you talk a little bit about that and how ethics played a part in that?

Gary:   It was a tough time but not a tough decision to make. The strike was right and just, and the Detroit dailies–the Detroit News went on strike, too–were trying to screw over loyal people, and not just writers, who had worked very hard to make them profitable, quality products. It was particularly appalling for the so-called liberal Free Press, which had even editorialized against the use of replacement workers and in favor of anti-replacement worker legislation, to employ such tactics on its employees. Interestingly, none of the on-staff music writers at either paper crossed the line; I really do believe there’s a kind of ethic and code implied in the best music–certainly an ideology that people need to stand beside and take care of each other–that I think we all subscribed to. How can you credibly cover this stuff if you’re willing to cross a picket line or take another person’s job?

Steven:   You co-edited the outstanding MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. How did you get involved in that and what kind of satisfaction did you garner from the job?

Gary:   MusicHound, both the Rock volume and the entire series, was very rewarding. I gave birth to the idea with the help of the folks at Visible Ink Press (the series has since been sold to Music Sales, Ltd.) early on in the strike. We wanted to create the kind of album guide that wasn’t really out there, that was not only factually accurate but that also guided readers through an artist or band’s catalog as an alternative to the myriad album-by-album books; my idea was for MusicHound to be something akin to a good record store clerk or that fellow shopper you meet while you’re looking through the racks and with whom you strike up a spontaneous conversation. The most rewarding part of it for me, besides having my own Dewey Decimal System number, was being able to work with a lot of writers who I like both personally and professionally, and to be able to pay them. Even though the nerve center for the books was here in Michigan, it still felt like a team effort, and in editing the entries I was really able to enrich my own bank of knowledge as well.

Steven:   This is a quote from your introduction to the MusicHound album guide: “Most of all, rock has become a business, a lifestyle soundtrack that’s not so subtly exploited to sell product–and that includes far more than rock CDs. Every movie, every advertisement, every sporting event seems to draw on rock to set the tone and convey a message of freshness and vitality. That, in the end, seems to be the best definition of rock: a music that conveys a particular aura of potency. And that can be done with a voice, a guitar, a synthesizer, or the simple creation of a languid mood that sends you to a particular place of being.” I think you make a great point. Is that the definition of rock music to you or is it more complicated than that?

Gary:   It’s not a bad start of a definition, but I think there’s more to it than that. Rock ‘n’ roll, to me, has and always will be about attitude, whether that’s “Be Bop a Lula” or “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” or Bitches Brew or “Bawitdaba.” It’s gone from being just a tag for one particular kind of music to an umbrella term for all kinds of musics that are made with a similar kind of spirit, and under that umbrella we’ve sub-divided them into additional terms. There are some who would call everything “pop,” as in popular music; that’s a good point, but I still think rock conveys a different meaning and defines the spirit and attitude of the music in question.

Steven:   What do you think about the state of rock journalism today? Is it worse than years gone by and what music magazines/music writers do you read and admire today?

Gary:   Contrary to a lot of disingenuously popular opinion in our field, I don’t think rock journalism is in a bad place at all these days. There’s a lot of it–more than ever before–and that’s not necessarily a bad things. It opens the field up to a greater variety of ideas and perspectives, as well as opinions, and it means music is being covered in greater depth than it ever has before. It also means there are more opportunities for people who want to write about music to do it. I think the role of music journalists has changed over the years, more than many of us would like to admit. It’s now more about reportage than criticism or analysis. The “information society” has created a need for just that, information, and the demand is for reporting and disseminating news more than it is for insightful or concise reviewing. Ironically, I think the hole is there for a more detailed approach, as readers have so much access–especially via the Internet–to music news and can often get it as fast as, and sometimes faster than, the journalists do. You would think that would make more room for wit, perspective, personality and in-depth analysis, but I find that’s not been the case.

So we have a plethora of information about what’s happening and a relative paucity of explanation for what it all means, which I think writers of the “old school” find a bit hard to swallow. Then again, many of those colleagues have settled into comfortable, if not lucrative, niches, and I’m not sure that they relate as much to the ways of the world outside their bubbles. That’s not a dis, either; they’ve worked hard to establish those places for themselves, and more power to ‘em. I don’t have any trouble finding things, or people, to read, although I must say I particularly enjoy the cheek and breadth of British publications such as Q and Mojo.

To name individual writers is tough, for fear of leaving anybody out, but I still find that Marsh’s rage and righteousness is often right, and the byline is usually enough to get me to read stories by Greg Kot, Dan Durchholz, Tom Moon, Steve Knopper, Jaan Uhelszki, David Fricke and, really, a whole host of others.

Steven:   What is your desert island disc and why?

Gary:   I hate this question; I know, so does everybody else. As much as I’d like to be hip and obscure, I think I’d go with Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run; it’s an album that’s always meant a lot to me on an emotional and personal level, and it really encapsulates the rock ‘n’ roll experience for me–its irreverence, its rebelliousness, its grandeur and its undying faith that there’s always something better on the other side. Whenever I take a road trip, I find it’s always the first thing I put in the CD player to set the proper mood. Plus, if you play it backwards it says…Oh, never mind.

Interview with Spin’s Alan Light

By Steven Ward and Scott Woods (January 2002)

This site tips its hat all over the place to people who write about pop music but perhaps not enough has been said about the editors who help shape those words, and (for better or worse) define the territory itself. Alan Light has spent a fair amount of time on both sides of the fence: as a writer for Rolling Stone from 1990 to 1993, followed by editor-ships (with occasional forays into writing) at Vibe (’93-’97) and Spin (’97-the present). (Not a bad resumé for a Cincinnati kid with “no other marketable skills.”)

In regards to his current editorship, “defining the territory” must in itself pose some major challenges, especially given that Spin‘s once-core (alternative) audience has more or less splintered off in a dozen different directions (hey, punk, where you going with that house 12″ in your hand?). Still, despite a few experiments in the direction of its coverage, Light insists that Spin is, above all else, “a rock & roll magazine.” Not America’s only, mind you, but it’s a little too late for that now.

rockcritics.com:    What made you want to be a rock critic?

Alan Light:    I never really wanted to be anything else, or even really thought about being anything else. I grew up around a newspaper, my mother was a dance critic in Cincinnati, so going to a performance and then discussing it, forming ideas and opinions, and writing about it were just part of daily life. My dad is a big jazz fan, so I listened to a lot of bebop and swing at home. And then I discovered my mom’s Beatles records and pop music on the radio and that was the end of that. I remember writing a report or a piece or something about Elton John after reading some paperback bio of him (also my first concert–”Philadelphia Freedom” tour, Riverfront Coliseum, age 10). Then kept writing through high school and college and on and on. I do of course worry that if I ever really get sick of writing about music, I have no other marketable skills.

rockcritics.com:    If forced to choose: who is your all-time favorite writer? Would you say this person exerts a bigger influence on your style or on your ideas? (Feel free to discuss others who’ve influenced you as well.)

Alan Light:   I’ll assume we’re talking about favorite music writer, and the answer to that would be the late Robert Palmer. We got the New York Times at home when I was growing up (my mom was/is an expat New Yorker), and I read his stuff voraciously as a teenager. I was so knocked out by his staggering range of knowledge and taste, and the clarity and elegance of his writing. Then I went back to all his liner notes, his magazine writing, Deep Blues, and it was all just so consistently good. Palmer always seemed to really serve the music, to offer ways into thinking about different artists, connections and contexts you wouldn’t easily come up with but all perfectly logical and brilliantly argued. I know there was talk after he passed away of collecting some of his newspaper and magazine writing and I really, really hope that can happen someday.

rockcritics.com:    What is your favorite book about music, and why?

Alan Light:   I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I hadn’t read Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train in high school. What he accomplished in terms of merging rock criticism with cultural studies and American history and literature absolutely turned my head inside out. And across such a range of music! The Sly Stone chapter and the Elvis chapter and the Robert Johnson chapter are all equally riveting. So that absolutely had the biggest impact.

A short list of other favorite music books would include The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth; all of Peter Guralnick’s books but especially the first volume of the Elvis biographies; Deep Blues by Robert Palmer; The Death of Rhythm and Blues by Nelson George; Nowhere to Run by Gerri Hirshey; Bill Graham Presents by Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield; Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray; England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage; Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray; the Lester Bangs anthology Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung; Divided Soul by David Ritz; and anthologies of jazz writing by Gary Giddins, Martin Williams, Nat Hentoff, and so many others. I’m sure that I forgot something I’ll regret later.

rockcritics.com:    Was Rolling Stone magazine the first major publication you wrote for? What was your first assignment and how did you land it?

Alan Light:   I had written for my high school and college papers, and had started freelancing after college when I came to New York and got a job fact-checking (first at a weekly the publishers of the Village Voice tried for a few years called 7 Days, and then at Rolling Stone, where I had previously interned while still in school). I was writing for a community paper in Brooklyn and did some other little things–a piece for Down Beat, something for DanceMagazine. But yes, the first major outlet I had wasRolling Stone.

My break there came not from an assignment but from a performance I kind of stumbled into. In 1990, Bob Dylan announced a show at the club Toad’s Place in New Haven. As an obsessive Dylan fan, I offered to go cover it as a “Random Note”: “Dylan Plays Club Date.” The day of the show, he cancelled all press for the performance. Since Toad’s was a block away from my old residence in New Haven, I managed to scam my way in, plus smuggle a photographer inside, and Dylan proceeded to play this unbelievable show. He did four sets, played fifty songs–things he’d never played on stage, requests, covers–it turned into some kind of open rehearsal for an upcoming tour. I was the only journalist in the room, and when I got back to the office, Music Editor David Wild said, “That’s not a ‘Random Note,’ that’s a story.” It wound up being the news section opener, and Jann Wenner liked it a lot and, much to my amazement, told the music department to start assigning me more stuff.

rockcritics.com:    You covered a lot of rap music in Rolling Stone (and you edited Vibe‘s history of rap)–is hip-hop something you prefer writing about more than rock music?

Alan Light:   When I was first writing, it was an incredible time for hip-hop. The late ’80s/early ’90s were so incredibly explosive that it was without question the most interesting and vital thing going on in music. I had been a big hip-hop listener since junior high school, and I was lucky enough to be just the right age to catch the opportunity of a certain moment. I wanted to write about hip-hop and Rolling Stone knew they needed to cover more hip-hop and didn’t really have anyone on staff who was deep into it. So I got to write about Public Enemy and L.L. Cool J and De la Soul and N.W.A and Eric B. and Rakim and all that amazing stuff. When Vibe was first launching in 1993, I had no real reason to leave Rolling Stone–everyone was really supportive of me and my work there–but it seemed like such an amazing opportunity. So I went to be the music editor and then served as the editor-in-chief from 1994 to 1997.

There was a joke I made when I stopped editing Vibe that the day I realized Puff Daddy should be on the cover of the magazine was the day I knew somebody else should be the editor. But that kind of turned out to be true–it’s always hard to know the cause-and-effect, but when I stopped editing the magazine, I really stopped being excited about much new hip-hop. Other than the occasional great record, the last few years hip-hop hasn’t kept me interested. Or maybe I just got too old.

But the thing I did miss at Vibe was the balance I had been able to have at Rolling Stone. Though I concentrated on hip-hop, in my time there I also wrote cover stories on U2 and Neil Young, even some country music writing (a Wynonna Judd story was particularly memorable), and it was really fun and a real luxury to be able to go back and forth. Just using different language for stories in different genres was always really refreshing. So by the time I came to Spin in 1999, I was excited to get back to a wider range of music, though of course my chances to write are few and far between.

rockcritics.com:    Is it true that you wrote your senior thesis at Yale on the Beastie Boys? Could you elaborate on what that was all about?

Alan Light:   A big shout-out here to the American Studies department at Yale. Yes, my senior thesis was titled “Rhymin’ and Stealin: The Beastie Boys Phenomenon 1987.” I was an American Studies major concentrating in American popular music, which I cobbled together between various jazz, black sacred music, musical theater, and ethnomusicology classes. Just as my senior year rolled around, Licensed to Ill was beginning to blow up, and I was just fascinated by these three middle class white kids (almost exactly my age) who had put out this massive hip-hop album. Initially, like many others, I think, my first thought was how easily that could have been me and two of my friends if we were only bigger knuckleheads. But the more I thought about the Beasties, the more questions were raised about race and crossover and sampling/postmodernism and meanings of rock & roll. And I was able to persuade the department that this was a valid way to spend nine months of study. There wasn’t really anyone all that appropriate to serve as my advisor, so I ended up with a somewhat radical feminist Marxist media studies professor who was mighty skeptical about these three idiots with girls dancing in cages onstage–but that was actually really good for me and made me push much harder to try to get at some of this stuff.

rockcritics.com:    Describe your experience at Vibe–i.e., was it a lot different than writing for Rolling Stone?

Alan Light:   Well, first of all it was very different because at RS, I was purely a writer. Especially because I was doing so much hip-hop, I often felt like I was sort of an island unto myself–which was great. If I said I thought we should do something on Gang Starr or Main Source or whoever, my editors were really good about saying, “OK, go do it.” When I left RS to help launchVibe as the founding music editor in 1993, it meant assuming a whole bunch of new responsibilities: planning stories, finding and developing writers, dealing with money and stuff–it was a lot of work and great fun to launch a new magazine and really try to create a new kind of platform for writing about urban music, and it of course came with all the thrills and chills of planning hip-hop coverage, which doesn’t exactly run by a conventional clock. (It was also where I met my beloved wife Suzanne so I will always owe Vibe more than I can repay.)
Taking over as editor-in-chief was of course even more of a change: managing and administrating became the bulk of my day and while I believed in the magazine so intensely that it was well worth it, it certainly got me even further from dealing hands-on with the music. It started me asking questions I still ask myself on days when all I do is look at numbers: “Was this why I got into this line of work?” But, y’know, somebody’s got to do it!
The other thing that was different was working with such a young and inexperienced staff. The nature of Vibe meant really growing young talent–it’s not like we could go poach editors from Business Week–and while that could be incredibly gratifying, it could also be exhausting at times. I was very, very proud of our staff when I was there and very pleased with all that we accomplished, but it really was a 24 hour a day gig that often involved a lot of explaining and hand-holding and getting people working their first jobs used to being in an office.

rockcritics.com:    Talk a little bit about editors and editing. First off: who was the best editor you’ve worked for, and why?

Alan Light:   Anthony DeCurtis was the person at Rolling Stone who really noticed me and took me under his wing when I was first starting out. I learned more from working with him than I can ever express. And that was more than just how he edited my copy, though that was great, too; it was also letting me work closely with him when he was editing the “’80s issue” when we did the “Four Decades of Rock” series. The way I could watch him think about how to put an issue together, how to think about which writer was right for which story, what mix of things added up to the best package–those are things I draw on every day still. But I guess more than anything it was his range of musical interests, his openness to new writers and new voices, his emphasis on clarity and precision in writing, that made­-and makes–Anthony so important to me.

rockcritics.com:    What do you enjoy doing more, editing or writing? (And why?)

Alan Light:   At this point, so much of my average day is tied up in management, budgets, media, etc., that the chance to actually edit copy is always something of a relief. Editing can be extremely gratifying, but I miss writing every single day. The rare chance that I get to still to do some (like the current Spin cover story on U2 that I wrote) is a luxury and a joy.

rockcritics.com:    A lot of people interviewed on this web site have suggested that writers need to expand their musical horizons more, that many writers nowadays are too comfortable in their little corner of the world. And yet, in most publications, you often see the same writers covering the same territory. As an editor, do you tend (for whatever reasons) to “narrowcast” your writers–i.e., peg certain writers for certain assignments related to their field of interest?

Alan Light:   Well, certainly I was the beneficiary of having a particular single field of interest: I wanted to write about hip-hop at a moment when Rolling Stone realized they weren’t doing enough with that universe. And I think specialization is kind of inevitable; you’re allowed to have tastes and preferences and choose to get deeper into certain sounds and styles rather than others. But I do think that the more you know about all music, the better–and that it will show in your work. I guess that’s just common sense, but the more history and the wider range of information you have to draw on, the more dots you can connect, the more ideas you’ll have, the more brainwaves it will spark. I think the very, very best music writers are the ones who keep trying to expand their musical horizons. No question that when I was editing Vibe, the best stories we ran were by writers who knew about more than just hip-hop; that was clearly true of Danyel Smith, Greg Tate, Michael Gonzales, Kevin Powell–those writers were all interested in different musics and grasping at ways to keep learning about stuff that they could then refract through the new lens that hip-hop offered with which to view the world.

It’s also what made that piece by Nick Hornby in the New Yorker‘s music issue so repellent. I don’t care that his conclusion was that all the records in the Top Ten sucked–most of them did, in fact. But it was his proud admission that unless given this assignment, he would never have been caught dead listening to these records–that they were so beneath contempt that they weren’t worth his time. This isn’t, by the way, some random hot novelist they called up with this idea–it’s the so-called pop music critic at the country’s leading magazine of ideas! Would they for a second have tolerated a piece by their theater critic saying, “I couldn’t be bothered to see Cats or The Producers: why should I care about those things just because they’re popular?” The close-mindedness that represents the exact opposite of thoughtful criticism is why Hornby’s piece was offensive and insulting.

Hope this isn’t too much of a tangent, but I just want to get this in somewhere. My favorite line about criticism comes from the great Albert Murray, from Stomping the Blues, in which he wrote: “The most elementary obligation of (criticism) is to increase the accessibility of aesthetic presentation.” Give people a way to think about a performance or a recording, present an approach or an idea for them to consider and debate. That’s the job.

rockcritics.com:    Do you think it’s true that to run a successful music magazine nowadays you must fill a particular niche or cater to a specific readership? Is so, what is Spin‘s niche?

Alan Light:   I do think that focus, perspective, and point of view is more important now than ever. The music business has gotten so big–everybody talks about the fragmentation of the pop music audience, but the real point is that those are mighty big fragments! And they’re big enough that they don’t have to talk to each other. I don’t think that Blender is a bad magazine, for instance, but I am still not convinced by their premise that you can cover all kinds of music for all kinds of people; I’ve just never seen any evidence to support that that’s the way people listen to music or, more to the point, the way they want a magazine to present music to them.

I think Spin is a rock & roll magazine. And I think Moby, Jay-Z, and Gorillaz all belong in a rock & roll magazine. It’s been important for us to stay clear of the bubblegum explosion the last few years and hold down the fort for music with more substance and teeth.

rockcritics.com:    Under you editorship at Spin, what piece are you proudest to have been a part of?

Alan Light:   I think our coverage of Woodstock ’99 will stand as the definitive account of that event. The festival happened very late in our production cycle, and we had to make a decision about whether to just blow it off or try to dive in very deeply very quickly. It soon became clear that this was a really central story for our readers and for this whole generation, so we sent two reporters back up to the site, put two more on the phones, another on-line, and had to take in everything they filed and turn that into a story in about five days. We ended up running about 11,000 words, beautifully written by two of our editors, Dave Moodie (who spent much of that week sleeping on the couch in my office) and Maureen Callahan. We really didn’t want the piece to come off moralizing or lecturing the readers–many of whom were exactly the kids who were at Woodstock–but just tell the story straight and let people decide for themselves what they thought about it all.

What was really gratifying about the piece was that we knew we would come out late ­ with our lead time, the story wouldn’t be out until almost two months after the event. That’s why we though if we were going to do it at all, we really needed to swing for the fences. And as easy as it is to feel like everyone nowadays wants quick, short, instant information, we got a huge response to that story. It was a reminder of all of the strengths of a monthly magazine: ­ we might not be in readers’s hands minutes after an event, but we can go deeper and fuller and offer context and analysis in ways no other medium can.

rockcritics.com:    Who are some of your favorite practising music critics at the moment?

Alan Light:   I guess first I’ll take care of our staff: Several of Spin‘s editors–Sia Michel, Will Hermes, Charles Aaron, and Jon Dolan especially–are really great writers who I feel guilty sometimes for having put into jobs where they don’t get to write enough. Chris Norris has really developed into a very strong, thoughtful, and consistent profile writer. Kate Sullivan has started writing some nice stories on the kind of rock bands that can be hard to write about. I think Sacha Jenkins (who’s on an academic sabbatical at the moment) is a tremendous talent who I think will only get more significant as time goes on–he’s someone who truly comes out of both hip-hop and rock, and that is quite a set of knowledge and emotions to draw on.

Sacha also comes out of the always-interesting ego trip camp. Chairman Mao, Gabe Alvarez, et al., really contribute something special to hip-hop coverage–the insightful humor that comes from genuine love for the music. Of course the Jon Pareles/Ann Powers/Neil Strauss/Ben Ratliff team at the New York Times sets the standard for daily coverage. Jon is just unbelievable for his range and his energy and clarity (anyone looking at this now who hasn’t read the interview with Jon on this site should click over to that now). I’m always interested in work by Tom Moon in Philadelphia and Greg Kot in Chicago. My friend Elysa Gardner does some wonderful things at USA Today, writing for a certain kind of super-mass audience. At Rolling Stone, everything Anthony DeCurtis and Mikal Gilmore and David Fricke do is worth reading, I enjoy Jason Fine’s writing when he gets the time to do any, and Rob Sheffield can be really, really good. And I miss Danyel Smith, whose music writing is on the back burner while she finishes a novel but I think did some extraordinary things over the years.

rockcritics.com:    What are the main functions of your job as an Editor? Was it necessary to be a writer in order to do these jobs well?

Alan Light:   It’s so hard to anticipate what might be waiting for me from day-to-day, but editing a magazine is much more about managing/coaching/directing than anything else. Which means everything from haggling with labels for cover subjects to overseeing putting each issue line-up together to dealing with budgets (far more of a job this year than anytime I’ve ever seen before) to managing staff to being the public face of the magazine in the rest of the media. None of this, you’ll notice, has a whole lot to do with writing. It is of course one of those great professional ironies that probably applies to every career–as you move further up the ladder, you move farther away from the things that got you into that line of work. My experience writing obviously helps inform all the decisions I have to deal with–hopefully, still knowing what a good story is and what it will take to get it–but being a negotiator and a diplomat and a talking head takes up much more of my time than being an active journalist. And I have to stop here and praise Spin‘s staff for being so good and so passionate and so clear-headed, because it means I can do all the rest of that stuff and not worry about the magazine continuing to run smoothly.

rockcritics.com:    Do you still personally do line-editing at Spin? Talk about your thought processes in regards to this (i.e., what do you look for in copy, do you ever have to make drastic changes to copy, what are the most common problems you encounter in this, etc.).

Alan Light:   I do still top-top-edit pretty much everything in the magazine. It’s still my favorite actual part of the job–working with the words is almost therapeutic after staring at budget sheets or blathering into TV cameras. By the time copy reaches me, it shouldn’t need drastic changes–it will already have been through an editor and a top editor (usually Sia Michel, our spectacular Executive Editor). My edits almost always come down to one thing–clarity. I’m always the one trying to push for making copy as lucid and clear and comprehensible as possible, trying not to destroy any sense of a writer’s voice. It’s sometimes a tough balance at Spin, because I think it’s important that we are a place that provides some more latitude for writers to have individual styles and not impose a strict, universal tone throughout the magazine, but I still want things not to get excessively opaque. So that’s usually what my line-editing comes down to. I have never ever demanded that a writer change an opinion; I think as soon as you do that, either more favorable or less, there’s no going back. That’s a line I just won’t cross–for my own survival if nothing else. This way I can always blame the writers for bad reviews with an entirely clear conscience.

rockcritics.com:    How does Spin handle a situation where major changes need to be made to a writer’s copy? Is there an official “policy” about this?

Alan Light:   No official policy–I think anything like that has to be case by case. I think writers should expect that they will be edited. We’re a national magazine, not a ‘zine, and the simple experience of going through the edit process is not inherently an oppressive or burdensome thing. If there’s really a problem with a story, we’ll deal with it as necessary–give the writer another shot at it, kill it, whatever. But we don’t just change copy without the writer’s participation; the piece ultimately does have her/his name on it. If it’s so problematic that the writer and editor reach a stalemate, I’d rather not run the piece and just move on.

rockcritics.com:    You must, no doubt, get a pile of submissions, resumes, and proposals from younger hopeful writers. What advice would you give to someone trying to break in to this field?

Alan Light:   Find places to write and get published, no matter how small or cheap or unglamorous. There is no way to learn as much as you learn looking at your own work in print. And there’s no way to show an editor that you can do more than just talk a good game that’s better than having a bunch of clips to show. I just don’t know any other way to do it. Every single person I know who does this for a living, and not just music journalists but all journalists, has their variation on exactly the same story.

From Hard Rock to Rock of Ages: Former Hit Parader Writer, Father Charley Crespo

By Steven Ward (February 2002)

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, Charley Crespo frequented the rock clubs of New York and New Jersey gathering info for his fan-obsessed dispatches for metal rag Hit Parader, as well as some other papers in the New York/New Jersey area.

Today, Crespo’s “flock” is as far away from the world of hard rock and heavy metal as one could get. The man once known as “Everynight” Charley Crespo is now a Roman Catholic priest.

This recent e-mail interview tells the strange and wonderful story of how Charley Crespo stopped following Ted Nugent and Aerosmith and wound up hearing confession from his parishioners in the Virgin Islands.

Steven Ward:   Why were you known as “Everynight?”

Father Charley:   For a while, I had a weekly column in a local New Jersey newspaper called the Aquarian. I used to go out to clubs and concerts and press parties and everything else every single night, usually to three or four events each night. At the end of the week, I put together all the news and views I gathered into a weekly column. The editor and his wife jokingly used to call me ‘Everynight Charley’ because I went out into the rock world every night, so when the editor gave me the column, he named it “Everynight Charley.” The name stuck for a long time because I really lived up to it–for about 15 years. I was everywhere and never missed anything. I shunned elitist status and V.I.P. privileges, so I was very approachable, and became among the most well known rock journalists in the local rock scene because I was so approachable.

Steven Ward:   I fondly remember your stuff in Hit Parader–one of the great rock mags of the ’70s/’80s. How did you first get hooked up with Hit Parader, and what years did you work there or write for them? Any other publications?

Father Charley:   Thanks for the compliment. It is hard to believe anyone remembers any of that stuff. SO much has happened since then.

I began going to rock concerts regularly in the late 1960s. I loved going to see Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix. I made good friends with someone who taught me how it was possible to get into concerts for free, as door policies were lax, among other factors. No longer limited to my discretionary funds, it became possible for me to go to many, many concerts, so I practically lived at rock palaces like the Fillmore East in New York, and would see every music act that came through New York. Since the Fillmore and some of the other rock halls would have two concerts on Friday nights and two on Saturday nights, I would frequently see the same concert up to four times.

I began to meet others who frequented the concerts. Many were rock journalists, and they often suggested that I begin writing for rock publications, since I was so close to the inside and was getting so much good information. I resisted at first, but by the early 1970s, it was not so easy to get into concerts for free anymore. One day in 1976, at the encouragement of a writer named Charlie Frick, I wrote a review of every concert I had seen that week, about a dozen, and sent them to a local newspaper called theAquarian. I knew I was a pretty good writer, but I did not know what the editor would be looking for, because I did not even call him up. My submissions were unsolicited. The following week, I saw that the Aquarian published eight of my articles. This told me I was at the start of a new phase of concert madness.

Because I was at every music event in New York, I became a popular journalist quickly, and soon began writing for other publications besides the Aquarian. I never looked for the highest bidding publication or for fame, all I wanted was free access to multiple concerts every night. At that time, there was so much music going on in the concert halls and in the clubs!

One of the many publications that sought my work was a short-lived magazine called Grooves. When that magazine folded, the publisher, John Shelton Ivany, was offered Hit Parader, and he took me on to be his right hand man. That was about 1980. Together we redesigned the whole magazine. Very soon, heavy metal became really popular, and Shelton hired and trained Andy Secher to be its editor, since he loved heavy metal so much.

Steven Ward:   Do you have fond memories of any particular Hit Parader interviews you did and working with the Hit Parader staff?

Father Charley:  While most rock stars only wanted to talk about their new album or tour, there were a few people I interviewed over and over again because they knew how to make themselves interesting. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss, Ted Nugent, Ozzy Osbourne and Rick James are a few that I really got close to because of how many times I interviewed them. Rick James flew me up and let me stay over in his house in Buffalo many times. I remember Ted Nugent flying me up to Syracuse on my birthday once when he was the celebrity driver in some sort of Big Wheels obstacle race. He had the most beautiful girlfriend in the world at that time, Pele. They were laying in the hotel bed cuddling up and watching the Tony Awards, while Ted and I were talking. He pulled out a small pistol and offered to give it to me. Not only did I not want this gift, how could he think I could get on the plane with a weapon–unregistered at that! I don’t think I ever published that information.

One of my most memorable interviews was catching up with Ozzy Osbourne in New York a few days after Randy Rhoads died in a plane crash. Ozzy’s emotions were so raw. I helped him articulate his feelings into words. I edited and shifted his statements, and we ran the article under his by-line, as if he had written it specifically for Hit Parader. I also caught up with Ozzy a couple of hours after he bit the head off a dove at his record company. I heard about it and ran right over in the hopes of catching him, and I did catch him just as he was leaving the building. I remember he had no clue as to the negative commotion that would come out of that episode.

I remember how down to earth some people were like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister; he had been playing New Jersey bars for years and I had a popular column in a popular Jersey rock newspaper, so we had heard of each other for years before we met. Steve Tyler and Joe Perry treated me really well, I guess because I was one of the few journalists that was still writing plenty about Aerosmith when their career was taking a nose dive due to heavy drug use in the band; maybe also because I had the same last name as their guitarist of around that time.

Overall, I did not hang around rock stars that much. Although I had a passion for the music and the excitement of live events, I generally found that the rock stars themselves were rather shallow. Like I said, all they often cared about was promoting albums and tours, or talking about how they wanted fame or were famous. Fans who went to the concerts were more real and more interesting. Rock fans like you, Steve.

Steven Ward:   What year did you leave the world of rock journalism and why did you leave?

Father Charley:   By the mid-1980s, I found that in general, music lost its creativity. Very few acts were trying to break new ground. Once in a great while I would discover an unknown band like Metallica or Black Flag playing in a small and empty club, really succeeding at making new sounds, and this would blow my socks off. These moments were getting rarer and rarer. Most of the “hair bands” were really just rehashing one another’s music. The older bands were rehashing their own music as well. Maybe if I had hung around long enough for grunge I may have been refreshed, but by that time I had bailed out.

In 1979, I moved into a very nice and very large loft in Union Square, walking distance to many of the concert halls and clubs. In 1982, I moved to another loft a little further down, closer to CBGBs. The loft was great, but the area was a bit seedier. One night in the mid-1980s, I remember looking out my window on a snowy night wondering if any of the homeless men in the area would be unable to stay warm and dry. Here I was, comfortable in my big digs and some of my neighbors had no shelter. In my search for some meaning, I began attending church services and volunteering on Saturday mornings at a very effective soup kitchen. I defended my work at Hit Parader to myself and others, but inside I knew that I was doing more valuable work as a volunteer than as a journalist. In the end, I knew that I had to begin a process of turning things around, that I would work full-time for the right things and do the writing on the side, regardless of the cut in income. Once I was hired by Partnership for the Homeless as a case worker, I knew my days as a rock journalist were coming to a close. Within a year, I received a significant promotion, making the new wage still less than what I made as a journalist, but enough to live on. I seldom wrote beyond that.

By the early 1990s, I discerned in prayer that God was truly calling me to do more. In 1992, I entered a seminary in the New York area and stayed for four years. After a break, I completed my studies in Florida. I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in May, 2001, and am presently assigned to a church in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. I have no regrets. I love working for the Lord.

I go to New York a couple of times a year now and always go to a concert or two while I am there. It is still exciting to be there, and to catch up with some of the local musicians and journalists I knew from years ago. I must admit that every once in a while I see that Aerosmith or one of the other groups I knew well are playing somewhere and I wonder if they would remember me if I walked into their dressing room.

Steven Ward:   Who were your favorite music writers or rock critics to read when you started out (people who maybe influenced you), and which rock magazines were your favorites during the ’70s and ’80s?

Father Charley:   In the early sixties, I enjoyed some of the one-shot fan magazines, especially those that dealt with the English invasion (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, etc.), especially since I looked so forward to seeing them on Sunday nights on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” I used to buy Best Songs for about 15 cents and Song Hits for 25 cents; it is hard to believe now, but since I came from a poor family, Hit Parader was out of my league because it was 35 cents. These magazines had a few feature stories on popular groups, but I really bought them for the song lyrics, so I could sing along with the radio. I used to go to the record store every week to pick up a free copy ofGo! I might still have a bunch of those tucked away in my mom’s closet. My first article appeared in Go! Actually it was a letter to the editor. I was in the sixth grade, I think.

Honestly, by the late sixties, I was really, really into concerts, but not into magazines. I would pick up a magazine here and there, but mostly I would read local papers. I did not like Rolling Stone because I felt it never captured the excitement or the immediacy of the culture. I was really living it, so I did not feel a desire to read about it. By the mid-seventies, when I started writing, I tried to capture the excitement of the fan, along with the knowledge that came from living the New York rock scene. Perhaps I failed more often than I succeeded in Hit Parader, I really don’t know. I preferred writing for local papers, where something exciting happened one night and in a matter of days I had it in print.

Steven Ward:   Do you still read or care about rock journalism today or does that somehow conflict with your vocation now?

Father Charley:   While I never look for or buy rock publications, my friends know how to filter out the stuff I still want to read. I still care about some of the artists I knew. For instance, someone sent me an article last year about the suicide of Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics. Now that was a metal band that was all noise and show, but I liked Wendy very much as a person. I do not watch television much, never did, but recently I was changing channels and saw Bebe Buell on the “Howard Stern Show” promoting her book. I liked her very much, but was very disappointed at how she let that jerk manipulate her. It was pretty trashy. Well, the whole concept was trashy; she is trying to capitalize on a very shallow and tragic side of her life. She really is a bright woman and has a lot more to offer than a tell-all of her sexual encounters with rock stars.

Sometimes I realize that there is a part of me that still wants to tune in and read a lot more, that still wants to know what is going on in the rock world, but I do not see that side of me until an article about a rock band finds it way to me. It is hard for me not to read the article then.

Steven Ward:   You say you will occasionally visit rock clubs when you visit New York. Is that weird because you are a priest? You know–the atmosphere, the cursing, etc.?

Father Charley:   I can never deny my roots and my history. Rock concerts were central to my life for many years. They were great years. I have not yet attended a concert dressed as a priest, so only those who know me know that a priest is present. The music is no longer a rush in the sense that I have not been going to concerts as a devotee of the band, but the environment still charges me up. Isn’t there something extremely exciting when the lights are off and a rock band hits the stage with thunder? Even if the music isn’t appealing, the enthusiasm and the enjoyment of the crowd gets to me. Occasionally I still hear good music as well. The negative elements of the environment are the same as I might hear in a New York subway, so I can deal with that. The only thing that upsets me is when someone uses a microphone to mock God or Christianity in any form, or to promote un-Godly behavior. That hurts me very deeply. We can all have a good time together, can’t we?

Steven Ward:   Does your previous life as rock scribe help you or hinder things in any way today as a Roman Catholic priest?

Father Charley:   The writing skills I developed would help me no matter what I chose to do in life. Knowing the mechanics of the media publicity machine has been useful in helping me make presentations professional and well-publicized. For instance, I periodically have to promote a church event, and I know how to talk to reporters in order to get better coverage and move the story from page 55 to page 5.

When I attend concerts in New York, many people who find out I am a priest have lots of questions. I understand that it is not every day that one meets a rock and roll priest. I remain very approachable. I am delighted to share in civil conversations with people. Some people are so anti-religion that it is hard to get into a pleasant conversation, however, and that is not so pleasant. I do not go to concerts for debates.

Steven Ward:   Do you ever get the urge today to put your thoughts down on paper about this or that band or album?

Father Charley:   It is funny that for many years, even when I was a writer, I wrote of my experiences but never spoke about them much, because I did not want to come off as a special person. I felt it was unfair to the person with whom I was speaking. Nowadays, in the circles I run, seldom does anyone know about my past. When I return to New York, people are always asking me to share my stories of the Rolling Stones, John Lennon and other rock icons. Now it is fun to have someone jar my memory, because I am slowly forgetting a lot. Maybe that is why I took the time to consent to this interview. Nevertheless, I am certain that no one could persuade me to take the time to write any of it down. My focus now is on working for the Lord.

Steven Ward:   Does any new music that you hear today move you the way it did 20 years ago?

Father Charley:   Frankly, I seldom listen to music anymore, unless I happen to be spinning the dial on a car radio. The popular music here is a modern edgy-sounding calypso. Young people go absolutely nuts for groups like the Jam Band. It is a really frenetic sound. One day some white British group with crazy hair will take it and become big stars in America with this kind of music.

What very little I have heard of Godsmack and Creed sounded interesting. I could not understand what Godsmack was singing about, but they sounded like a group on a search. I may be way off on that one. It is interesting that when I do listen to music, I still listen with analytical ears, and sometimes find myself scrutinizing the musicianship and the production.

Steven Ward:   If forced to choose, what would be your desert island disc?

Father Charley:   Something gospel or silence. At this point, if I could only listen to only one other human voice, there is no way I would want it to be a secular recording.

Steven Ward:   Any favorite memories?

Father Charley:   I wish I had not forgotten so many.

My favorite non-rock moment was spending an afternoon with Muhammad Ali at his training camp in Pennsylvania when he was trying to make a comeback. He was one of the greatest show men ever.

Concert-wise, it was the ongoing thrill of spotting an unknown band making their debut New York performance and knowing instantly that they would be big. AC/DC playing CBGBs on a Wednesday night, U2 at a small club called Hurrah, Bruce Springsteen opening for Martin Mull at Max’s Kansas City, the Allman Brothers Band opening for Blood, Sweat & Tears at the Fillmore East, Queen opening for Mott the Hoople at the Uris Theater on Broadway, Van Halen opening for Black Sabbath at Madison Square Garden, I just imagined all of them would be huge and they did become huge.

Journalism-wise, I was blessed to be able to get lots of scoops. Joe Perry spoke to me first about leaving Aerosmith; I do not know if he spoke to anyone else for a while. I was the only reporter to report the wild inside track on the Sex Pistols tour of America, even though I did not get close to them myself and had to depend on inside sources. The best thing about being a well-known rock journalist was that once I became known and was expected to be everywhere, no two days were ever the same. These were very exciting years.

Steven Ward:   So, what do you see in the future?

Father Charley:   The future of rock I cannot see. Especially since September 11, we can see that these are sobering times. Hopefully more acts will be inspired to sing songs that mean something, like Creed does. When I saw parts of some of the recent tributes on television, I noticed virtually all the acts were veterans like the Stones, the Who, Billy Joel and Tom Petty, so it looks like classic rock will continue to have a large audience for a long while, perhaps greater than any one new popular face.

My future is likewise fairly predictable. I will catch a few concerts and read a few rock articles here and there in an attempt to remain somewhat connected, but I am far more excited about how I will be celebrating Mass in a local prison for the first time on Palm Sunday. With God’s help, wherever his priesthood takes me, I will remain forever approachable.

A Spontaneous Explosion of Personality: Jim DeRogatis

By Andrew Lapointe (March 2002)

Rock critic Jim DeRogatis is the author of Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Rock from the ’60s to the ’90s, and Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs. He’s also written for Penthouse, Spin, Guitar World, Salon.com, and spent eight disheartening months of his life at Rolling Stone. However, he considers his current position as music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times to be his best job.

In a recent telephone interview, Jim expressed his thoughts and opinions about the music industry, Napster, Lester Bangs, and what he thinks is the best definition of rock ‘n’ roll.

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Andrew:    What do you think is the origin of rock journalism?

Jim:    Well, you know, I traced it out pretty much in Let It Blurt. The thing at this point is that it’s become a career path–perhaps not the most respectable career path in the world, but a career path nonetheless–and what’s easy to forget is that through the first 10 years of rock ‘n’ roll’s history, there was no serious criticism or journalism about it. Rock sprung up in the mid ’50s, and it wasn’t until 1966 or ’67 that anyone seriously began to criticize this music and to write about it with journalistic standards and critical standards. There were only fan magazines with pictures and reprinting the lyrics of songs, and really no serious writing about it. It wasn’t until Paul Williams and Crawdaddy! in ’66–with Richard Meltzer contributing to that, as well as Jon Landau–that any serious writing about rock ‘n’ roll music started to happen. And [Jann] Wenner had some knowledge of that and ripped it off. I mean, he saw that model and Rolling Stone kind of sprang from that. Basically all rock journalism springs from that model of Crawdaddy!, and its editor, Paul Williams, deserves a lot more credit.

But for 10 years, the music existed in a complete vacuum, and then for almost 10 years–a little less than 10 years, from 66′ until the early ’70s–it was people doing it because they had this burning desire to write about the music, this passion to write about the music. There wasn’t any money and nobody took it very seriously and the only places publishing things were either what today would be called fanzines, which is how Crawdaddy! started or Greg Shaw’s Bomp! magazine, or small, small alternative rags that hardly paid anything, which is how Rolling Stone started. And Creem, which was a magazine that I obviously spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about and researching because of the Bangs book. And it wasn’t until the mid ’70s when magazines started to pay money that it started to be possible to be a rock critic as a career path. That’s sort of where Almost Famous picks up, when the young Cameron Crowe approaches Lester Bangs. That’s when it had started as a path you could follow to fame and fortune, relatively speaking. But when Lester started down that path and when a lot his peers–Richard Meltzer or Nick Tosches–started down that path, it was just out of the desire to write about this music that they loved, and they had things to say about it that they just HAD to get off their chests.

Andrew:    So, in your mind, define what good rock ‘n’ roll is.

Jim:    I remember being 17 years old and sitting there and asking Lester that question. And I write about it in Let It Blurt, and I have the interview I did with Lester up online, and he paused for a really long time, and I remember that surprised me. I mean, it seemed to me that he would have had that answer on a cue card, you know, on an auto-pilot tape ready to play whenever anybody asked him. But he paused for a really long time and it took a long time to answer it, and finally he said something, and I think it’s the best definition of rock ‘n’ roll I’ve ever heard, and that’s: “Rock ‘n’ roll is something that makes you feel alive.” Now, I think that that is really broad and you could stop and say, “That doesn’t mean hardly anything!” I mean, any great piece of art, a painting, or a piece of classical music, or a sunset, can make you feel alive. Even if you’re talking about it in extra-musical terms, I think you could look at rock as being a certain attitude, and still it’s very wide-ranging–I mean it could go from Nirvana to Van Morrison, Public Enemy to the Flaming Lips, and what do any of those things have in common? But you kind of know it when you hear it, when you encounter it. I think it’s a sort of an uncensored outpouring of emotion.

The part that Lester said, something that makes you feel alive, I think as I’ve narrowed it down in my own critical career, I’ve come to think of it as a spontaneous explosion of personality. It’s not something that you need to go to Juilliard to study for 10 years in order to be able to play it, it’s just this serendipitous outpouring of your soul into this music on stage or on album. And I think that some people have enough personality to make one great 2-½ minute single-”Louie Louie” is a great single and the Kingsmen never really did anything else and it doesn’t matter because that’s brilliant and that’s as good as rock ‘n’ roll gets. But the Rolling Stones had an incredible 10 or 15-year run, from the beginning through Some Girls in 1978, of just amazing rock ‘n’ roll music, and obviously they had a lot more personality to pour into those grooves! But you know, it really doesn’t matter, they’re both brilliant and they’re both great rock ‘n’ roll and I think they both come from the same place.

Andrew:    Define bad rock ‘n’ roll.

Jim:    I think bad rock ‘n’ roll is anything that lacks that soul or where that personality is somehow censored or tailored or filtered through something that’s less than honest, less than immediate, less than passionate, less than soulful. That’s not authentic. You know, there’s this bugaboo of authenticity in critical discourse. And your egghead critics get all hung up on authenticity, pro or con, and that goes back to the blues, the 85-year-old black blues guy sitting on the porch picking his guitar being the “real deal.” Never mind that he’s got a Cadillac and he’s married to a 22-year-old white girl! We think of Nirvana as being authentic because [Kurt] Cobain was a lower middle class kid from Aberdeen, the middle of nowhere, and he was poor and hungry and slept under a bridge, blah blah blah. On the other side, the Strokes are not authentic because they’re rich kids who grew up on the upper East Side of New York. All of that’s bullshit, I don’t think any of that matters. I mean Chuck D. made great rock ‘n’ roll; he was a middle class kid who went to college on Long Island. He’s been one of the best expressions of black rage in this country that we’ve ever heard. It’s not hypocritical of Him; it’s not hypocritical of Ice Cube to have been expressing what it was like to be a gangster on the streets of L.A. if he really wasn’t. I don’t think that that’s authentic, but I do think you can sense an authentic personality, an authentic expression of passion and soul. I think that that’s true of the Strokes–I mean, I listen to the Strokes and I hear them having something to say, and it has nothing to do with where they’re from, who they are or how they grew up, it’s something to do with them giving me a slice of their personality–their soul if you will–in an uncensored manner as directly as possible.

And you can certainly play roles in rock ‘n’ roll, you can adopt personas, as Lou Reed has or Iggy Pop or arguably Kurt Cobain–I think he was a guy who wore a lot of different hats. And that’s not what I’m talking about. But I mean when you pick up the guitar and approach that microphone, are you filtering this in some way? Are pretending to be something you aren’t? Or are you slicing open a vein and letting it flow? And I’m completely willing to admit that that’s 100% subjective! I may hear the Strokes as the most genuine expression of rock ‘n’ roll spirit that I heard last year, and you may think that I’ve completely been had! I don’t think that my opinion is necessarily any better than yours or any better than some cab driver out there on Michigan Ave. in Chicago, as far as judging whether this music moves me emotionally. Now, I do think that I know a lot more about rock history and I’ve interviewed far more people than you or the cab driver has. All that stuff–my musical knowledge is greater, I’ve made records, I’ve toured in bands, I’m in a band now, and I play the drums. All that stuff, I have over you, perhaps. I have a lot more experience–I have a lot more records!

But as far as whether this piece of music moves me emotionally, I never look down on anybody else’s opinion. If a 14 year old girl comes to me and can make the case about some Britney Spears song moving her to tears, or making her life better, filling her with joy, if she honestly feels that emotion, then God bless her! I mean, that’s what all of us are trying to find in life, those reasons for living, those pieces of art that make our life better, that connect with us. I think that’s wonderful, as long as she can make the case. But if she’s just buying that Britney Spears record because it’s the hip new sound that’s been sold to her, along with her Abercrombie & Fitch clothing and her Sony PlayStation and her Starbucks, then that’s a horrible con, and it’s as bad as being raped. I just think that’s horrible.

Andrew:    So what attracted you to magazines like Creem in the beginning when you were younger?

Jim:    I never started reading Creem until well after Lester’s heyday. I came to Creem much later. And still, it had this irreverent attitude; it didn’t take anything too seriously, especially not itself, or the musicians, even when it was clearly a musician that the editors and the writers worshipped. It was never super-serious or sanctimonious, it was never trying to sell me anything, it was as snotty and loud and fun and liberating and scary and exciting and sexy as the music itself. And that’s what I think good rock writing should be, I think it should have the same spirit as the music that it’s purporting to cover.

Andrew:    Was rock journalism something that was popular to kids your age at the time?

Jim:    No, I think it’s only ever been something that geeky kids who have no life are drawn to! [laughs] That was certainly me. I think that it’s always been something for the kid who feels like he’s sort of outside. And I guess that’s another common denominator in a lot of the great rock ‘n’ roll that I love. It doesn’t have to be, but I often find that it’s music that’s made by people who are unique individuals and feel like they don’t fit into the mainstream, that they’re sort of standing outside looking in. And sometimes that can go over the top and it can be kind of obnoxious, like Billy Corgan–you know, like, “Nobody loved me and now I’m cool, so fuck you!” That kind of attitude, I don’t always like that but, but I do feel that rock is often music made by people who feel that they’re square pegs in a round hole, and I think those are the kind of people who tend to read about it, too. I remember talking to Kurt Cobain about Lester Bangs and Creem magazine and both resonated with him as well. He was a kid who felt like he didn’t fit in Aberdeen, everybody was running around playing sports and shooting guns–that wasn’t him, and in rock ‘n’ roll he found a community that was an alternative, that would accept people who were different. And he found that through great writing, whether it was people like Lester Bangs or the fanzines of his day. That’s how he connected with people who were like him.

Andrew:    Why did Lester believe the notion that rock was dead?

Jim:    Well, I think that in ’73 and ’74, it was becoming obvious that rock had been seriously co-opted by the corporations, that it would become a big business and it had lost a lot of its spirit. It was the era where that was happening for the first time. It was a huge impact to Lester to see the Rolling Stones, when they toured for the first time after Altamont and supporting Exile on Main Street, which is a great album. But suddenly there were crowds and crowds of hangers-on whose only job was to keep the Stones separated from the fans, and here was this cult of celebrity invading rock ‘n’ roll, where the people on stage really thought they were better than the people in the audience. And I think that hadn’t been the case in the ’60s. I mean, rock wasn’t big enough for that to actually be the case before. And you know, suddenly it started to become the case, it started to become all very professional, and the danger of that is that suddenly its going to become mere entertainment. Going to a rock show is going to be not much different than going to see the Ice Capades. I think that was a harsh realization for Lester, and he hated that notion. But that doesn’t mean that that’s the only way it is. I think that you can see a genuine sense of community in rock at lots of different points in its history. A certain scene explodes, and before the vultures of the music industry descend, things can be pretty utopian. I mean, certainly it felt that way in Seattle in 1989, or in New York in 1974 or ’75, or in London in ’76, or in the early hip-hop or rave or indie-rock or alternative scenes. I’ve seen it several times myself, and it really comes down to when there’s no fake, arbitrary walls thrown up between the audience and the performers, because all great rockers try and break down those barriers. But when the fame, the fortune, and the celebrity start to become more important than that ideal of community, that’s when rock ‘n’ roll starts to lose something.

Andrew:   There seems to be something about meeting infamous writers or performers like Lester Bangs, and despite their reputations as egotistical SOBs, they turn out to be kind and easygoing like that.

Jim:    I would disavow yourself of that notion pretty quickly! Because one of the first things you learn when you start to do interviews with a lot of people whose music you admire is that often times people who make great music are really horrible people. Sometimes people who are the nicest people don’t make music that’s particularly exciting at all. Don’t ever think that just because you like somebody’s music, you’ll like them as a person. I have to say that Lester Bangs was on a short list of rare exceptions of people whose work I really, really admired and who turned out to be wonderful human beings. That’s been the exception, not the rule.

Andrew:    But what I mean is that, just people like Lester, who has this reputation as an SOB, and when you meet him it’s different from what you hear.

Jim:    Well, it depends on whose doing the defining, you know? If you ask certain people in the New York media establishment about Jim DeRogatis, they’ll tell you I’m an opinionated asshole who just loves to piss people off, that I’m arrogant, I’m obnoxious, I’m a prick, and I’m really mean to people. And what they’re saying is that I’m mean to phonies like them who are all about politics and not about good music or good journalism. And I’ve certainly had my run-ins with those people. I think people who would have described Lester as a prick often were trying to sell him something that he didn’t want to buy. Also, with Lester it was kind of complicated. He was an alcoholic, he had some severe problems emotionally, he was a drug addict, and I think there were times when he was raging out of control and he was a raging asshole. I know myself, I suffer from a little foot-in-mouth disease, and sometimes I say stupid things, but never really from a position of malice. If I’m trying to say something nasty to somebody, I generally say it to their face in a public forum and all in the interest of having a debate. I think that if we don’t care enough about this music to argue about it, then why the hell have we devoted our lives to it? That’s my approach, and one of the things that broke my heart when I was at Rolling Stone for eight months is that I’m supposed to be at the top of my game at this magazine, the pinnacle of music journalism, I’m the deputy music editor, and I could never get anybody involved in a good fight about music, or even a conversation!

Andrew:    It wasn’t really about that? They didn’t give a shit about the music?

Jim:    It wasn’t about that at all, it was about climbing some career ladder. I’ll never forget, late on a Friday afternoon, we were the only two people in the office. David Fricke had that Husker Du live album that came out a couple of years ago, and he was playing it in the office, and I ran out and said, “OH MY GOD! HUSKER DU I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I SAW THEM LIVE…THEY’RE THE GREATEST BAND EVER!!!” And he just looked at me and he didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a word, and to myself, I just said, “O.K., fuck you!” And I’ll never forget the guy with the red hand cart going through the aisles, stopping at everybody’s office, and handing them cash for the piles of CDs! These guys were selling these discs that they had never even listened to, and they didn’t even leave the office to do it. Talk about not giving a shit about the music!

Andrew:    How did Bangs influence you? What impression did he make on you as a young writer?

Jim:    Well, I never wanted to write like Lester. I knew that he had a very unique voice that came from being who he was. So the goal wasn’t to write like Lester, it was to uphold what I think were his more important core values. I got the sense when reading him that he was being 100% honest with me, that this guy would not lie to me, even when it was making him look bad. There are certain things he confesses in some of his pieces that are pretty embarrassing, that make him seem like less of a good person, and all of us have those things. Or he’ll admit that, “I first thought this about this record, but now I realize that I was completely wrong!” I think all of those things are part of his strength and evidence of his honesty–that he’s not trying to shill me this product, that’s he’s trying to tell this to me as straightly and as honestly as he possibly can. And that’s what I’ve tried to take from Lester and incorporate into my own style, my own voice. It probably took me a very long time; maybe some people think I don’t have my own voice even now!

But one of things that really bothers me is when I go to some of these rock critic gatherings like South By Southwest and I talk to people, I talk to my peers, I talk to other critics, the things that they say on panels and in the hallway are completely different from the things that they’ve written! Even when I’m inconsistent, I’m at least being consistent in my inconsistencies! The things that I’ll say to you, between us if we were having a beer at a bar, are the same things I’m going to write in my columns. And I think that that’s important. I feel I owe readers my unflinching honesty, and I think that every writer worth his or her salt has in their heads an ideal reader, the person on the other end who’s reading this, and you’re writing for them to some extent. And I think the reader who’s in my head is pretty much who I was when I was 17 and first reading rock writing myself. It’s this kid who’s obsessed by this and he’s got $20 in his wallet, and then, I would have been able to go to J&R Music World and buy four albums, but now, you’ve got $20 in your wallet you’re going be able to buy one CD! But that means everything, and that’s really important, and I’m not going to advise myself to spend that $20 on a piece of crap. I’m not going to sell myself a bill of goods.

Andrew:    So you have to be more conscientious now?

Jim:    As far as what?

Andrew:    As far as what you choose as music and what you’re putting money towards?

Jim:    Well, one of the things about being a rock critic is that you’ll never have to buy any records any more! But I think there is even more at stake today. One of the reasons that the major-label industry so fears Napster is that they know they won’t be able to “get” people anymore. I mean, every music fan that I’ve talked to who has been a devotee of Napster, when it was an album that they really loved, they wanted to go out and buy it even if they already downloaded it. They wanted all the art work, they wanted the lyrics, they wanted the real pressing. Very rarely did they NOT buy something; it was only the stuff they were lukewarm about or really turned out not to like, or they liked one song on an album. I think the real reason the industry fears the internet so much is that they know that they have to present quality music or people are not going to buy it! And rather than the simple solution–O.K., give us good music and we’ll pay for it!–they’d rather continue to sell us manufactured crap. As a result, they certainly don’t want us to be able to download it and sample it and hear it for free on Napster before we spend our money on it! They want to be able to con us.

Andrew:    What is your next book about?

Jim:    I am working on a book that’s a lot more personal, and which I tend to have a hard time synopsizing neatly, except to say that it’s sort of “Everything I know about life I learned by playing in rock bands,” though that’s certainly not the title (and it’s a sentence that won’t appear in the text). But essentially, the same basic impulse that had me writing about records in fanzines, and buying them obsessively, and playing them on college radio has always prompted me to make music as well–I always say I’m a drummer, not a musician–but I’ve made records and done tours and played in a ridiculous number of bands through the years, like 20 or more. Rock critics always get this thing–”You’re just a frustrated musician”–which is nonsense, because I’ve NEVER been frustrated, I’ve always enjoyed playing music, and not with any sort of career goals in mind, but just because I can’t imagine NOT playing music. And I suppose at heart this book will be the answer to the question, “Why?”

Andrew:    What are you’re future career plans?

Jim:    Whenever I see a question like that, it always comes as a bit of a surprise, because I’m like, “Oh, I guess I have a CAREER!” Which is not something I run around thinking about! But I consider the rock critic position at the Chicago Sun-Times to pretty much be the best job in the world, and I can’t imagine another city where I’d want to live. I do plenty of freelance work for some publications that I love and am proud to write for–Spin, Penthouse, Salon–and I am about to start a monthly column for Modern Drummer. I have a radio show with Greg Kot, “Sound Opinions,” the world’s only rock ‘n’ roll talk show, which airs every Tuesday from 10 to midnight on one of the Midwest’s best rock stations, WXRT-FM, and we’ve been doing that for three years, and have some pretty high hopes for syndicating it. (It’s also up on the web at http://www.soundopinions.net.) Basically, I’m doing exactly what I want to do already, and can’t see myself stopping any time soon. So how’s that for a plan?

• Click here for jimdero.com.

Three Boys and a Tape Recorder: Conversation Between Jim DeRogatis Takes Aim at Rock Critics and at rockcritics.com

Conversation between DeRogatis, Steven Ward, and Scott Woods (March 2002)

Jim DeRogatis wrote Steven Ward and myself a bunch of e-mails telling us all the problems he had with this site (he likes some stuff about it, too). I agreed with some of his criticisms, thought he was way off base much of the time (still do), and after a bit of back and forth between the three of us, Jim suggested we discuss this stuff over the phone — sort of as an addendum to Andrew Lapointe’s interview. What follows is a transcript of our conversation.

Unexpurgated navel-gazing? Gutter-level gossip masquerading as “discourse”? Mere boys club buffoonery? Like the site itself, I’ll wager it’s a little bit of all three. Or maybe Jim’s own capsule summary of rockcritics.com (from his homepage) gets closer to the heart of the matter still: “Warning! It can be enough to make you gag. But if you just can’t get enough…”

Thanks, Jim–couldn’t have said it better myself.

Scott:   I don’t know exactly where you guys want to start with this…Jim, I appreciate some of the stuff you’ve written to us in recent e-mails regarding the site, and stuff along those lines in general, and as I told you, I kind of agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but I guess I just want you to clarify a little bit, starting with a more general slant on things. I don’t know, talk about rock criticism in general…

Jim:   Well, let me turn the table on you guys first, ’cause I do like the site, and I think it’s needed. I think it’s extraordinary that we have this fucking Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and I mean, there’s no library as part of it, nor is there one as part of the Empower Music thing in Seattle [Experience Music Project]. I mean, the history of rock criticism–if pop will eat itself, then rock criticism has been eaten a hundred times faster. It’s just non-existent. As I discovered when I was doing the Bangs book, it’s impossible to track down, even in the Underground Press Archives–which is probably the best thing of its kind in the country–its coverage of Creem, Crawdaddy!, and some of the smaller magazines is really spotty. There’s no resource. And so, obviously, having devoted a big chunk of my life to doing this book about the history of a rock critic, a biography of a rock critic, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, so I think you guys in some ways are doing God’s work.

Scott:   Well, thanks!

Jim:   And, you know, obviously having been a fucking teenage geek myself who interviewed Christgau and Bangs when I was a senior in high school, I can even kind of understand the impulse of where you’re coming from. You know–pathetic as that may be!

Scott:   Yeah, we can probably all be counted in that!

Jim:   And you have to say it self-deprecatingly, with a laugh! But, that having been said, one of the things that mystifies me about rockcritics.com is why you guys–you kind of pull your punches. I mean, the e-mail exchange we’re talking about–what I wonder is, I understand doing a fanzine, I understand wanting to cover these people who don’t get covered and to convey information, but where you let me down as a reader and as a fan of rock criticism is, I wanna know what you think about people; I wanna know when you think Chuck Eddy is full of shit. I mean,surely–you devote as much space to Gary Graff or to Anthony DeCurtis as you do to Robert Christgau, and certainly you don’t think those are talents on an equal plane! I know you don’t!

Scott:   Well…

Jim:   You can’t! There’s no way you possibly can!

Scott:   No, let me clarify. I’m not saying such and such a person is necessarily a talent on the same level as such and such another person, but I think it’d be ludicrous to just give the big guys, or the guys who are most near and dear to our hearts necessarily even, the most space, or treat them with more reverence. Like, Steven has covered some people who I’d never even heard of until he said to me, “I want to interview this guy.” And some of these people I’m still not remotely familiar with their work. But I mean, they’ve got stories to tell that are just as interesting–well, possibly–as, you know, Robert Christgau or…whoever you wanna say, Greil Marcus…Jim DeRogatis!

Steven:   Even before the site, you can go all over the internet and you’re gonna find interviews with Marcus and Christgau because of their books…

Jim:   Yeah.

Steven:   And because of their background. But some of these people that tell their stories–I mean, you probably will never hear from them again, interview-wise, or they may never write a book or anything. So, at least it’s part of that historical thing, where some of these outsiders, or some of these lesser-known guys, tell their story, and they’re part of that, and they’ll always be part of that. I don’t know–for me that’s kind of…

Jim:   Well, yeah, I guess I was trying to push it toward a question, I don’t know if I got there, but, do you guys see yourself as…as what then? What do you see yourselves as doing?

Scott:   I guess to a certain degree we are providing this kind of “service.” I don’t know if this is gonna answer your question, but I think in terms of pulling punches, my feeling about that is, I’m happy to take someone on if an opportunity–if I feel there’s a specific opportunity for me to do so. I kind of battled with Chuck Eddy a few years ago when I interviewed him, and I mean, I am a big fan of Chuck, much bigger than you are, obviously, of his writing…

Jim:   Well, I think Chuck is an entertaining clown, but to take him seriously as a critic, it just offends me, because, you know, the kid who bought that heavy metal book because he really cares about heavy metal–Chuck just fuckedhim out of his $15 by telling him to go buy Teena Marie.

Scott:   Not necessarily…

Jim:   Oh, he did. He wrote that as an in-joke to rock critics, to you and to me.

Scott:   I think there’s also the possibility that there’s that kid out there who’s into heavy metal who’s gonna say, “Hmmm, maybe I should check out this Teena Marie record, or…” whatever. I don’t know, it sounds like you kind of wish he had a more narrow structure of what he covered in his book, and I think that’s one of the things…

Jim:   No, no, no, no, no. No, I don’t really think that Chuck likes music. I think Chuck likes music criticism. There was a Philadelphia Inquirer profile of him a couple years ago, and there was that famous quote of his where he said, “I never keep more than 2,000 records in my house at a time.” And to me, it just seems like, yeah, he would have a passion for Italian disco, and have all those records, then he’d get tired of that and trade all that in for a bunch of hair metal records, then he’d get tired of that and trade them all in for–you know, whatever. And to me, that doesn’t seem like a guy who has a deep and abiding knowledge–or love–of music. I think he was fond of the danceof music criticism more than actually dancing himself.

Steven:   Chuck comes up with some really interesting ideas when he goes off on tangents. I mean, I read one of his articles before I went to Stairway to Hell, and he said some things about Def Leppard that sounded crazy at first, but when I started to think about it, it made a lot of sense. And that’s how I went back to his book. And it’s not necessarily something that a heavy metal person or a person that likes Def Leppard might connect with, but if they would read it, and think about it, and go back and listen to what Chuck compared it to, they’ll find a connection that’s interesting.

Jim:   Well, see, I think Accidental Evolution was a much better book because it was about ideas, and you know, I think Stairway is a fundamentally dishonest book because it presented itself as a consumer guide or as a genre study, and it really wasn’t either. And as such I think it was just a fundamental disservice to readers. And when Chuck is just being Chuck, which is what he’s doing in Evolution, I have no problem with that. But when he’s trying to be a rock critic, he’s pretending to do a record review, and it really is about anything but the record.

Scott:   But didn’t Bangs do that?

Jim:   I don’t believe so. I don’t think when he was writing, even when he was flying furthest afield, when it seemed like he was not saying anything at all about the record–when he was talking about himself–I think that eight times out of ten, the point he was making was actually profoundly fundamental to that record. He never had a disrespect for the reader to the point where…you know, Meltzer jokes about reviewing records that he never opened the shrink wrap…

Scott:   Well, there’s a good example.

Jim:   Yeah, absolutely, and that’s a fundamental disrespect to the reader. That having been said, Meltzer’s toss- offs about his bottle cap collection were probably a million times better than that Wishbone Ash record–whatever. But Meltzer has nothing but disdain for the Wishbone Ash fan, and maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t. But Lester never did, Lester was writing about something deeper than the actual grooves sometimes, he’s writing about the soul of the music. You know, eight times out of ten; the other two times he was full of shit. Chuck’s batting average, I think, is probably two times out of ten he’s connecting, and eight times out of ten he’s full of shit.

Scott:   But I’d argue about “disrespect” for the reader. I don’t think not writing about the music in a consumer-oriented way is always about disrespecting the reader, it’s also like he’s opening readers minds by approachingwriting in a different way.

Jim:   Well, we can agree or disagree on that, but the thing is, both of you guys just gave me more opinions in those couple sentences from each of you than I’ve gotten from rockcritics.com. And it seems to me that if you’re gonna be a fanzine for rock critics–which is sort of what you are–or you’re gonna be a repository for rock critic knowledge, or a community gathering place–and all of those things I think are valid and great and sorely needed–one of the things that I’m missing is any sense of why you’re doing it, and what you value and don’t value. Because I really think–I know, deep in my heart–that you honestly don’t think that Gary Graff is a talent who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Rick Johnson or Paul Williams or Kordosh, or…you know what I mean? You guyscan’t possibly believe that.

Steven:   Yeah, but when you say “the same breath”…It’s like we have this–it’s kind of like a level playing field in presentation…

Jim:    Yeah, but that’s fucked! It’s like saying Led Zeppelin IV is the same kind of record as Britney Spears’s last record. I mean, by presenting all this stuff on an equal level, and sans any sort of commentary from you guys, I don’t get a sense that if you think J.D. Considine is as “important” or as talented or as insightful or as great a writer or as significant a thinker as you think–Greil Marcus is!

Steven:   I do! I mean, that’s my opinion…

Jim:   Well, that’s what I want, I want more of that!

Steven:   Well, here’s the thing. Those interviews, whether they’re e-mail or telephone–and there’s no doubt, Scott and I have both said that the telephone interviews are far, far better, ’cause we get this back and forth…

Jim:   Yeah, I’ve stopped doing e-mail interviews, ’cause it’s really onanistic and solipsistic.

Steven:   Some writers prefer that…

Jim:   Yeah, they want the control…

Steven:   But I don’t know if that interview is the place for that. Maybe there’s some avenue where we can go into opinions and what we think, but those interviews, I don’t know that they’re the place for them. I like the fact that, you know, we’re gonna have an interview with Greil Marcus and then one with Gary Graff. I don’t want us to be like–and maybe this is a horrible analogy–but I don’t want us to be like the Village Voice or something. I don’t wanna just have the essay on Bob Dylan, I want to have the essay on Bob Dylan, then after that have an essay on AC/DC.

Jim:   Well, I applaud that, you know. Creem covered Van Morrison and they covered the 1910 Fruitgum Co. And my ideal fanzine does the same–Jesus, I write for a daily newspaper, you know, with a circulation of, whatever it is, one-and-a-half or two million. I have to cover Britney Spears, and I cover the White Stripes, and I wouldn’t want to miss either. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m glad Gary Graff is up there, I’m glad Considine is up there, if only so that I can laugh at the stupid things Anthony DeCurtis says, you know what I mean?

Steven:   I know that one especially aggravates you; I love Anthony DeCurtis, and I know you can’t stand him.

Jim:   I just think he’s the worst. I mean, I think he’s subhuman, but that’s me, it’s just opinion, and certainly it’s not gonna come as news to Anthony, though not as many care about Anthony as Anthony would like to think–it’s probably only Anthony and maybe, you know, Anthony’s mom–but you know, given the small circle of us who docare about this, part of the fun it seems to me is talking about what’s worth valuing and what’s not. And what I was saying to you in one of those e-mails is, I disagree with you, I think you can do it in an interview, I think you can do it in a couple ways: I think you can do it in the introductions to your pieces, I think you can do it more in columns, I think you can do it–I mean, in any of a million forums. But don’t rule out being able to do it in an interview. Some of the best interviews that I’ve done–I think I’ve gotten to be a really good interviewer, and I actually love the Q & A as a format because…It seems like 99% of the artists I’m talking to these days–and certainly the writers are the same way–they expect to be taken by the nose and be given this opportunity to be selling whatever it is they’re selling. And when they’re presented with someone who may disagree with them, someone who may not like their new album, who may not appreciate what they’re selling and is going to veer off the course and is not just gonna let them hit auto-pilot and give them this tape in their head which is this prepared spiel–suddenly, you’re having a real conversation. “What did you say? Did you just say ___?” I started an interview with Damon Albarn–and I’ve interviewed him a lot of times–I’ve liked Blur–but I started an interview with him the other day, and I just said, “Congratulations, this Gorillaz thing is the biggest scam ever perpetrated in rock history…”

Scott:   Ha!

Jim:   ”I mean, you really pulled the wool over…”

Scott:   Yeah, it’s a piece of shit…

Jim:   And he just, he just laughed, he laughed hysterically. Now, maybe he wouldn’t have and he would’ve hung up on me, and John Lydon is famous for hanging up on interviewers. But you know what? The ones who have character–and this isn’t self-serving, I’m not saying, “this is a brilliant interview, gentlemen!”–but that chat I did with Stephan Jenkins that got reprinted in the Da Capo book [Best Music Writing 2001, ed. Nick Hornby], you know, that guy hates my guts, and I’m no fan of his, but it was a good conversation because we were talking about ideas, and I respect him enormously. You know, I’ve had contentious interviews with Courtney–and I don’t mean you have to have that Bangs/Reed contention thing, I don’t mean that–but we can talk about ideas, you know, and you can challenge people in an interview or present your idea. You know, “Hey, Chuck, I think this is what you were doing,” you know? “Tell me why I’m wrong, or tell me what you think you were doing.”

Scott:   Well no doubt about it, and the last thing I want this site to be is subservient and sort of lame. But Steven hit upon a very good technical reason why that does happen sometimes; it is often just way more convenient for both parties to do the interview by e-mail, and that isn’t an ideal way to do it often because you can’t do the back and forth thing.

The other thing I would say is, we let a lot of that stuff come out just in what the critics say themselves. I mean, for me, some of my favorite stuff on the site is when the critics do kind of bitch about other critics–it’s fun stuff to read–and there’s plenty of that on the site. I mean, I agree with you that maybe not enough of our own personalities has come into it, but I would find it a little weird to get this person to answer all these questions by e-mail, take up all this time of theirs, and then sort of write an introduction saying, “Well, you know, in the overall scheme of things their writing was kind of shit, but, you know, we thought they had a good story to tell.”

Jim:   Well, but that’s what we do. I mean, I may interview Brandy, and I may or may not say to her, “Your album is such a piece of festering crap” to her on the phone, you know? I’m trying to get her perspective. But then, when I’ve got to present this Brandy interview, I’m certainly gonna quote her–to quote the fuzzy young Cameron inAlmost Famous–warmly and accurately or whatever–but that doesn’t deprive me of my right to say that her album is a piece of festering crap! I mean, I don’t owe you anything by you having given me an interview, you know? I don’t know, that’s just my opinion, ’cause I wonder why you guys do this and I wonder…

Scott:   Well we wonder the same thing! Believe me. And there’ve been many times over the last couple of years where Steven and I have both written each other e-mails saying, you know, this site is fucked! What are we doing this for? And sometimes an interview has been put up there, and we’re both kinda like, maybe this one’s kinda lame, but what are we gonna do? But let me just say something about Anthony DeCurtis!

Jim:   Ha Ha Ha! Can I tell you an Anthony DeCurtis story?

Scott:   After I tell you my thoughts on him. I don’t really like Anthony DeCurtis all that much as a writer. I haven’t actually read a lot of his stuff, and the reason I haven’t read a lot is because most of the stuff I have read I have not really found all that compelling or that unusual or very personal, and I don’t generally love that kind of writing, obviously. But, I maintain that that is one of the best interviews we have on the site because that was him actually speaking in a truer voice or something. And I think that’s one thing this site can do that’s valuable–it can actually give people–I don’t wanna raise ourselves to this level–but it can give them a truer voice sometimes. Especially when it is by phone and not e-mail. So, I do like that interview…

Jim:   Oh yeah, and there are actually knee-slapping guffaws in that interview, and I think, yeah, it’s a brilliant interview. I like it, I just think somewhere in there it should’ve been pointed out that the auteur genius behindRocking My Life Away is in fact a pathetic hack, you know…

Steven:   Well…

Jim:   With very little to no taste whatsoever.

Steven:   But the person doing that interview doesn’t think that at all, and I don’t know what that says about me, but I like Anthony DeCurtis, I like his writing, I like his style…

Jim:   Well, see then, I wanna hear you make the case! What do you like? What do you read into DeCurtis that gives you insight, that gets you fired up, that…?

Steven:   It’s just clear, concise, to-the-point, yet still descriptive, good writing about music. It’s as far away from stuff like Creem and the kind of…

Jim:   But that’s not the end all and be all, I get that from Pareles, and I think Pareles is a million miles away fromCreem, but, you know…

Steven:   Yeah, I like Pareles for the same reason.

Jim:   I mean, you can say those things about Jon: he’s from the musicology school, he’s very respectful, he’s very restrained, but I get real insights and ideas, but I’ve never once read a single thing that DeCurtis or David Fricke wrote that made me say: Wow! I’ve got a new way of looking at this music, because of this piece I just read by this guy, he gave me an idea! I’ve never once gotten an idea from either of those guys.

Scott:   Well, it’s interesting, too. Andrew, who just did the interview with you…

Jim:   An earnest young boy!

Scott:   But it’s very similar. There’s people out there who don’t like Jim DeRogatis, no doubt, and I don’t think anyone’s gonna get a sense from that interview. But I think what he does is he lets you say what you have to say–the David Fricke anecdote is classic…

Steven:   Yeah, that was wonderful.

Jim:   I’ve got a classic DeCurtis one. He lived in the same building, when I was an editor at Rolling Stone–he lived in the same fucking building as Fricke, but I don’t think those two got along; I may be wrong, but I think that they didn’t. This is a couple years ago, right? There’s e-mail, there’s fax, and it was only a couple of city blocks away from Rolling Stone. He would call up and he would say, “My review is ready. Would you send the messenger over to pick it up?” Somebody would have to go over to the fucking house, a messenger who makes $25 a trip or whatever, he’d go over to the house, pick up his typed-out review, bring it to Rolling Stone, where some fucking editorial assistant would have to re-type it into the system. He could’ve e-mailed it, he could’ve faxed it, he could’ve walked it over, he could’ve given it to Fricke who could’ve walked it over–you know, he could’ve fuckin’ made a paper airplane and opened his window and threw it out the window and it would’ve got there, he was so close! And he’s–”Send the messenger, my copy is ready.” I’ve got a million of those stories, boys!

Scott:   Okay, I mean, that’s a funny anecdote, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of a writer he is.

Jim:   Oh yeah, ’cause he thinks his fucking prose is James Joyce, boys, that’s what I’m trying to say. The point of the anecdote is, he thinks he’s a genius! He calls his book Rocking My Life Away, he puts a painting on the front of it, a full picture on the back–he thinks he’s fucking God! He thinks he’s better than Lester Bangs!

Scott:   But what rock critic, what great rock critic, to some degree doesn’t feel that way?

Jim:   No, that’s true, you’re right…

Scott:   To think that anyone’s gonna buy a book full of your opinions–most of the people who hate rock criticism hate it for that very reason.

Jim:   Here’s where I disagree with you. You’re right, young Andrew was totally intimidated by me, and the reason I said, “Gee, a lot of people think I’m a prick”–I’m bringing up the subject. Andrew! Come on! I want you to give me some shit; if you’re not gonna do it, I’ll do it myself! All right, you think I’m an egotist, whatever–I don’t care about any of that stuff–but the one thing you’re never gonna be able to say about me is I wasn’t interested in other people’s opinions. I am interested. And I have a huge amount of respect for Chuck, even despite all those disagreements I voiced earlier, because Chuck and I have had great back and forth debates about that. And I think that what we have here–and I used the word ‘community’ before, in the best sense, for what you guys are trying to do, and I applaud that–and the thing I hate to the core of my being, and the reason the Fricke anecdote is in that interview, is just that thing where, “I’m not gonna play with you; I don’t have enough respect for you to even talk to you,” you know what I mean? It’s like, all of these guys are my peers, and I’m taking shots at them, and they’re welcome to take shots at me. Considine and I have worked together before–I’ve edited him, he’s edited me–we’ve traded nasty digs about each other–and I respect him for that. Because we can disagree about each other’s work. I don’t think he likes me at all; I don’t have much use for him. But I respect him, and there’s a difference, it’s respect, okay? And I think it’s in the dialogue.

Scott:   What was your point in your e-mail about the Village Voice and the EMP conference? I can’t remember exactly what you were saying…

Jim:   Yeah, I probably can’t either!

Scott:   Something about them being a closed community or something?

Jim:   Yeah, well I think that there are definitely left and right coast cliques, and it’s really dominated by New York. I hate to sound like fuckin’ Dan Quayle, you know, when you talk about the media elite, but he was right–he was onto something. And there is a media elite in rock criticism. You know, there was a great Neil Strauss piece a couple of years ago in the New York Times, where he took a look at the guest list of a couple of hyped shows, and it turned out that 75% or 80% of the house at some of these New York rock critic-friendly shows–I think one of them was Meat Puppets and Big Star at Trammps–and like, literally 80 or 85% of the house was press, radio, and industry. Right? So now, I go to see a show in Chicago–you boys go to see shows where you’re at–and it’s me, it’s Greg Kot from the Tribune, Peter Margasak from the Reader, and then 797 people who paid to get in. And as we walk through, 600 of those people are gonna stop us, pull us by the sleeve, and say, “Ahh, that fucking thing you wrote on Friday was a piece of shit!” Or they’re gonna say, “Hey, I liked your column.” Either way–we’ve got a dialogue, because we can’t escape it, with our readers. In New York, 85% of the fucking house is publicists and writers and radio people–they’re talking to each other, they’re writing for each other, they have no idea who reads them, and they don’t care…

Scott:   Well…

Jim:   They are not talking to real people, and they are not listening to music in the way that real people listen to music.

Steven:   I have a similar criticism of the Village Voice.

Jim:   Yeah, absolutely, it’s solipsistic and just awful.

Steven:   And I kind of talked to Chuck about that, but Chuck’s thing is, if you want to write a piece for the Village Voice, then you need to go into great, great detail and tell me why it’s important enough for you to write it, and, more importantly, why is it important to be in the Village Voice.

Scott:   I don’t have a problem with that, though. I mean, one thing I will say is, I don’t think the Village Voicemusic section is nearly as solipsistic, as you say, as it used to be. For a few years in the ’90s, I basically stopped reading it, ’cause it was very much this type of discourse which was very much like, I don’t know, a lot of terminology and jargon. And I think it actually has gotten away from that a lot.

Jim:   Yeah, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I mean, the reason we talk about the Village Voice is that there was a point in time where if you cared about good, smart, well done writing about rock ‘n’ roll, you had to read the Village Voice. And that hasn’t been true…when I was in college in the mid ’80s, Wednesday morning, first thing, seven in the morning, I was there buying the Village Voice–and I couldn’t imagine not reading the Village Voice. And I happened to be in New York, but if I wasn’t, I would’ve done whatever I could. And now it simply doesn’t matter.

Scott:    But I think part of the reason that doesn’t happen anymore is because that’s just not happening in music or in writing anywhere anymore…

Jim:   I’ve had this debate with Christgau…

Scott:   There’s no central focus to anything in the culture. And the internet has had a lot to do with that…

Jim:   All right, well, Christgau says, “Look, the Village Voice can’t have the impact it had when you were a kid”; and Creem magazine–there is no place like Creem magazine when you were a kid, because now there are so many different outlets and there’s so many voices and there’s so many people writing. But the thing is, those outlets are all saying the same thing, and what they’re saying is, “Two thumbs up–smiley happy buy-buy-buy.” You know, you can distill 90% of the writing about rock music to the simple message, “Buy this new product.” And it’s fundamentally dishonest, it’s stuff that’s being shilled, shoved down the pipeline, and one of the reasons that we talk about the Voice is they’re one of the few places where they don’t have those restrictions…to have that kind of freedom and to be doing so little with it. And we’re starved for great rock writing, those of us who love it. And we’re finding it here and there, and you asked me–and please include this ’cause you were basically saying, you know, “We’re tired of hearing you whine, who’s any good?” And I sent you that e-mail–and use it, okay?

Steven:   I have a different spin on the Voice than either of you: it never was central to my life. I started out readingHit Parader and Circus, and I didn’t care at all about rock critics. I was reading that stuff because my friends and I liked Iron Maiden albums. I didn’t really discover music writing until 1985. And it wasn’t the Village Voice, orRolling Stone or Creem. It was Musician. That’s where I fell in love with music journalism–not music criticism. Record reviews were never really my thing. I preferred reading interviews and features about how records were made and what went on in the studio. I loved the features by Timothy White, Charles M. Young, Considine, Chip Stern, Mark Rowland, Mac Randall and Matt Rensicoff. That’s why I have a strong affinity for Musician, Mojo,Classic Rock–and sometimes Rolling Stone. And I think that’s what I react to in the work of guys like Gary Graff and Anthony DeCurtis. I’m not into the hip, smart, young, Ivy League kind of writing you get–sometimes anyway–in the Voice with zany puns and jokes about hip-hop, electronica and indie-rock.

I mean, this very smart and funny writer George Smith–I talked to Chuck about this–recently had a piece in theVoice about the new Yes album, and all it did was basically make fun of Yes. Nothing about the music or what it sounds like. George said something about how Yes sound like a bunch of Ph.D.s of rock or something. I just think that’s a cop out. Maybe I’m un-hip in admitting this, but I like Yes and I want to know about the music. So I mean, the Voice is not totally my thing. I’m not really looking for strong ideas to spring from record reviews. But, but, having said that, I eventually went back and discovered guys like Bangs, Meltzer, Christgau and Chuck Eddy. Still, I wanna know what the music sounds like. That’s why Pareles and Considine are so great. So the interviews I’ve done at the site don’t have to do with me thinking Graff or DeCurtis are better thinkers than Bangs, or that they have better ideas. I just like what they do.

Scott:   And I like how Steven and I have very different tastes and ideas about all this stuff, too; that’s something wecould use more to our advantage. But Jim, let me ask you ’cause you’ve written for a lot of different types of outlets: do you think some of the problems you’re describing have more to do with the writers themselves or with the editors and the outlets that they’re writing for?

Jim:   There’s a lot of bad editing out there, and a lot of insidious editing, but by all means, the problem is coming from the writers themselves. The worst kind of censorship is self-censorship. At Rolling Stone, it was very rare that Jann Wenner would actually pull something from the magazine and replace it with a positive review–it happened to happen to me, but that’s fairly rare. Far more insidious is the writer knowing, I am going to get more work if I make my editor happy, if I make the publicist happy, if I make the artist happy, the record company happy–they have this long list of people who they’re writing for. And at the very bottom of that list, if they even make it at all, is reader. And to me, the only person you should be writing for is this ideal reader. And I tried to get to this with Andrew, and I think every writer has to have an ideal reader in their head, and if you’re selling short that reader, or being dishonest to that reader, that’s just, that’s sinful–absolutely sinful!

Steven:   So are the negative reviews in Rolling Stone just written by the writers who have the courage of their convictions?

Jim:   Oh no, the stuff that gets negative reviews in Rolling Stone is the stuff that doesn’t matter. There’s no way in fucking hell, and you know it, that Mick Jagger’s last record was gonna get a negative review. And there are several hundred of those names on the list, if not more.

Scott:   Well, I’ve got a self-serving anecdote here. I actually had a couple reviews last year in Vibe magazine, and I was all excited–wow, I’m in Vibe, this is great!–and I’d developed a bit of a rapport with an editor there–and these reviews just did not show up in the magazine remotely–well, I shouldn’t say “remotely”–but they were not the reviews I had written, basically, and in one case the rating was changed…And it was like–that was completely demoralizing to go through that.

Jim:   Yeah, see, you’re just not cut out for the glossies, man! You’re not ready for the prime time, because if you’d been slicker, you would have edited yourself before you ever handed that review in. So what you have is people who are writing–tailoring themselves–they don’t need to be censored ’cause they’re censoring themselves. And the point I made to Andrew–when I’m walking through South by Southwest, and I’m hearing people say something completely different from what they said in print–I despise that! Which is what I was giving you guys a little shit for what you’re doing.

Scott:   One thing I’m amazed you haven’t brought up is–I mean, I think one of the biggest problems with our site–maybe even bigger than what you’re suggesting–and it’s not for politically correct reasons that I say this–but we just do not have…we’ve interviewed one woman on the site, and not a single black writer. And it’s not completely for lack of trying–we probably could work harder at that; a few interviews have fallen through and stuff–and I’m absolutely amazed that no one has written us a nasty letter about that. So I don’t understand what people out there are thinking of us; I don’t understand how people use the site. I think a lot of people just use it as a resource, or as kind of a library, and I don’t think it’s evolved into anything resembling a discussion yet, and believe me, I would love it if it did, but I don’t wanna prescribe some sort of feistiness–if it happens, it happens. Maybe I’m not leading it in the right direction to do that…

Steven:   Just as a side note here, didn’t Sue Cummings–it was Sue, wasn’t it, Scott?–write us and ask about the lack of women on the site?

Scott:   That’s right.

Steve:   I mean, I’m still waiting for Deborah Frost to answer some questions–it’s been three months now! And Amy Linden–she weaseled out of it after she read my questions. After she read my questions and realized she was gonna have to start talking about, you know, writers she liked and didn’t like, she changed her mind and said, “I don’t wanna do it.”

Jim:   Well, I think the bigger problem in criticism is not sexism–and I’m not denying that there have been sexist incidents–certainly Ann Powers and Evelyn McDonnell made that case in the intro to their book [Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap], and I’ve had this conversation with both of them, but I think the bigger problem is–I used to think it was generational, that it wasn’t racial or sexist–you know, the black writers weren’t getting published because they were black, and the female writers weren’t getting published because they were female–’cause, you know, I was a short, fat, white guy writer, and I wasn’t getting published, not because I was a short, fat, white guy, but because I was not being conducive enough to the flow of commerce. I used to think it was generational. And I think the boomer canon is really obnoxious, and I’d say it’s as obnoxious in the rock critics we elevate as it is in the rock stars.

One of the reasons I was disappointed in Anthony’s piece against Bangs is, I could write a much, much better “Lester Bangs sucks” piece than Anthony did. Believe me! I’ve wanted to do this book for a long time and nobody wants to buy it, but it’s called Kill Your Idols, and it would be some of my favorite rock writers from my generation–you know, us Gen-Xers–’cause there’s really only a handful of Ys to emerge and I think I’ve nailed them all in that list I sent you–but it would be the Gen-Xers railing against the–it’s the flipside evil perverse of Stranded. Instead of the one-album-you-take-to-a-desert-island, it’s the one-album-that’s-universally-in-the-canon-and-hailed-as-a-masterpiece that you think is a raving pile of shit. So it’d be like a 3,000-word essay on why, say, Exile on Main St.sucks! ‘Cause I think you can learn as much from a really well-thought-out negative review as you can from a positive review, and I think that if you really love an album, you also know what its biggest flaws are. You know, I think that Pet Sounds is a masterpiece, but I also can make the argument that it’s a hyper-romantic piece of bullshit. So, believe me, I can make the anti-Lester argument, and I’m not gonna make it, I’m not gonna give that ammunition to somebody, but when somebody does it, I’ll be happy to read it!

Steven:   And that’s one of the reasons why Anthony did it. And no matter…

Jim:   Yeah, but he failed–he fucked up…

Steven:   And nobody else would do it, Jim–nobody!

Jim:   Well, that’s not true…

Steven:   …like it was the Holy Grail!

Jim:   No, I think Greil did it–I think Greil himself does the anti-Lester thing. And Meltzer did pretty well in his “Lester Recollected in Tranquility,” too.

Scott:   I found almost every review I read of your book, and the Meltzer anthology to be fairly honest and intelligent. I think the only bad reviews I read of your Bangs book–and when I say “bad” I mean badly written–were the reviews where someone tried to take the stance and write like Lester Bangs, and those were completely obnoxious to read. But even some Toronto writers–they actually pulled something out that seemed to approach honesty or something. It was kind of a bizarre phenomenon! Maybe ’cause they were writing about a writer.

Jim:   Well, I think they were writing about this ideal of rock criticism. I think it was useful in providing a forum to talk about when is rock criticism good? And I think that everybody kind of digs into the depth of their soul and says, why did I fall in love with this in the first place? Why did I devote my life to writing about this music? And, so people were really writing about that. But the thing is, I wish that discussion was continuing beyond, you know, “Lester was the best,” and “Lester’s dead,” and “now nobody writes like this–or nobody has the freedom to.” I firmly don’t believe that there can’t be another Lester Bangs–I think that list I sent you is–those people aren’t Lester Bangs, those people are better in some ways, they’re alive! They’re alive, and they’re writing today, and it’s not hubris, and it’s not me wanting to be Lester, but I mean, I think I’m better than Lester Bangs; I’m better ’cause I’m alive. I’m alive and I’m fucking 37, and I love my job, and I would not want to write about anything else, and I’ve already beat Lester by four years–I’m sorry, Lester. I love your pieces, and I think you’re the Jack Kerouac of your generation–and I admired this guy artistically. As a person, I think there were great things about him and I think there were horrible things about him, just like all of us. And I admire his work. But I certainly didn’t think that this was the end-all and be-all of rock criticism or I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. And I think that everybody–I honestly think that everybody on that list is as good as Lester Bangs, as good as Tosches, as good as Meltzer.

Steven:   But you know, before this interview, if somebody would’ve asked me, I would’ve guessed that you wouldlove Chuck Eddy’s writing. Now, aside from Stairway to Hell, and aside from how the book was marketed or put together, I would’ve thought that his writing, his ideas and stuff, would’ve been something that you liked. You don’t like any of his writing?

Jim:   There’s two separate things: you’re talking about his ideas and his writing. And I think the place where those things came together was his Accidental Evolution book, which I…

Steven:   So there is some of his writing that you like?

Jim:   Umm, yeah, but what’s gotta come first for me…You know, I abhor to the core of my being, the argument that Christgau made that Lester was all style and no substance. Christgau and Marcus both made variations of this argument, that Lester was a great stylist and there was no substance. I think Lester was ten times the intellect that either Christgau or Marcus are, and I…

Steven:   But Lester didn’t even go to college!

Scott:   Ha!

Jim:   Yeah, yeah, therefore he must be an idiot! I mean, this guy had a great brain, and to be able to really convey these deep and great ideas and at the same time be as entertaining as a writer is the ticket. And Christgau said that I didn’t pinpoint those ideas in my book, and I think he’s full of shit. You know, Christgau was like, “what were the ideas that DeRogatis highlighted?” when he reviewed the book. Well, I think that the ultimate democratic ideal, the whole punk thing, I think that’s an important idea, I think his ideas about the Dionysian core and essence of rock ‘n’ roll as expressed in his metal writing, I think those are ideas, I think there were dozens of ideas, and as I was synopsizing his pieces in my book, I was putting my finger on them, and I think Christgau did a sleight of hand and said, “these are the ideas, but everyone had already thought of them,” which is exactly what he did to Lester. But yeah, maybe there is no such thing as a new idea, but Lester gave them the most eloquent voice.

And you have Kurt Cobain in his journals, 20 years later–he’s read “Dead Lester,” he’s read Carburetor Dung, and he’s so fucking moved by Lester Bangs…did you read this in Charlie Cross’s book? [Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain] I was sitting in Courtney Love’s house–there’s a piece I just did yesterday on the horrible fight between Courtney and Nirvana over all that stuff. I was really proud of that–and this is another subject, but I think one of the things that’s really lacking in rock criticism is somebody who can do any reporting. I always–it’s a real insult, if you want to know what one of my buttons is, it’s when people say, “oh, he’s a great reporter, but he can’t write.” Or “he’s a great reporter but he’s not a great critic.” I mean, that’s like the worst insult to me. You can say anything else to me, I don’t care, but I am a good reporter and I like to try to think I’m those other things as well. But anyway–you had Kurt Cobain, and I’m sitting there reading this journal where he’s writing to Lester Bangs! You know, he never met Lester, and he never read Lester in Creem–he thought that this guy was such a conscience of rock ‘n’ roll, and this guy spoke to him, and conveyed his ideas about the music so eloquently, that Cobain was writing him letters! In heaven! You don’t have anybody writing the live Christgau, never mind the dead Christgau, letters, you know what I mean? Can you imagine having that kind of an impact on somebody? And Lester’s had that on hundreds and hundreds of readers…But I don’t think [laughs]–I don’t think some of the guys you’ve interviewed have pulled anything like that off!

Steven:   You mean…

Scott:   Father Charley…

Steven:   You mean Gary Graff hasn’t touched you?!

Jim:   Now you said it, I’ve only insulted him six or eight times in this interview, so now you did it this time!

Steven:   No, no, that’s no insult, come on now…

Jim:   Well I get to sit by these people at South by Southwest, man, but you know, I criticize because…

[And on that note, the Maxell XLII 60 abruptly and mercifully grinded to a halt.]

Chuck E… So Addictive: Voice Music Editor in His Second rockcritics.com Interview

By Steven Ward (March 2002)

Rock critic Chuck Eddy. Love or hate?

Let us count the ways…

• I love Chuck Eddy because his writing changed my life.
• I hate Chuck Eddy because now I spend way too much productive time reading and thinking about rock criticism (as opposed to, you know, listening to music).
• I love Chuck Eddy because his record reviews have more ideas and interesting takes on the music and what it sounds like than any other critic I have ever read.
• I hate Chuck Eddy because he lists Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop album in his book, Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, but does not list Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast (or anything at all by Iron Maiden) in his book.
• I love Chuck Eddy because only Chuck could include Teena Marie and Sonic Youth in a book about heavy metal albums and get away with it.
• I hate Chuck Eddy because he once rejected a piece of shit Pantera CD review I sent to him on spec for the Village Voice.
• I love Chuck Eddy because he once rejected a piece of shit Pantera CD review I sent to him on spec for the Village Voice. (Thanks, Chuck.)
• I hate Chuck Eddy because he thinks no one cares or gives a fuck about the new Kiss Box set, and therefore, it doesn’t deserve coverage in the Village Voice.
• I love Chuck Eddy because I would never have listened to a Kix album if it was not for the fact that he wrote about them as if they were the greatest rock band ever.
• I hate Chuck Eddy because sometimes he’s full of shit and he can come off like an egomaniac.
• I love Chuck Eddy because he’s a good enough writer that sometimes he even makes sense when he’s full of shit and so he has every right to act like an egomaniac.
• Most of all, I love and hate Chuck Eddy because, well, because he’s Chuck Eddy. So there. Read on and decide for yourself…

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  Steven:   Why did you want to be the Music Editor of the Voice? Did it have something to do with steady work vs. freelancing?

  Chuck:   I think that was probably the biggest thing. I mean, as a freelance writer, I found–and I was writing for just about every music magazine around, you know, Spin,Rolling Stone, and a lot of the alternative weeklies around the country, in addition to the Voice–and you know, other places I can’t think of right off the top of my head. But I really kind of hit a salary ceiling. I never–it’s not like my salary was climbing at all, and I’ve got three kids, and I was basically offered a job at the Voice that would’ve paid, well, basically, close to three times what I was getting as a freelance writer. Maybe that’s not mathematically correct, but somewhere in there. So it was that, and probably to a certain extent I thought that I was spinning my wheels as a writer, and I had thought about applying for an editorship years ago, it just wasn’t really feasible in my life. But I guess that’s the main thing. Money, and also a change of pace to see whether I could do it. I’ve always felt–at times that I liked it and at times that I haven’t liked it–I always felt a certain kind of attachment to the Voice music section. It’s almost like I can’t really imagine–though maybe I’ll eat my words some day–it’s hard for me to imagine any other editorship that I would’ve been anywhere near as interested in, including Spin or Rolling Stone or L.A. Weekly or the Boston Phoenix or whatever. I don’t know, maybe ifCreem came back from the dead, you know what I mean? But I mean, short of that, the Voice is certainly the place that I wanna be working.

  Steven:   Was it a hard adjustment? I mean, you spent years and years as a freelancer, always being forced to cope with editors, and now all of a sudden you’re the editor and you’re working with a bunch of freelancers.

  Chuck:   Well, I mean it was a hard adjustment in other ways, too. I moved to New York from Philadelphia, which is where my kids live. So I had to adjust to that. I had to adjust to the fact that I wasn’t writing anymore, or writing very very little. I literally wrote hundreds of articles a year.

  Steven:   You’re writing hardly anything now.

  Chuck:   There were people who actually said that they didn’t think that I had the, oh, the personality to be an editor, you know? There’s probably certain people who thought I was a little bit of a hothead at times as a writer dealing with editors. But–I don’t know, it’s not something that I knew would work, but it’s something that I think I fell into pretty well, and it’s not like once I started working with freelance writers that it was problematic.

  Steven:   Was it weird adjusting to the Voice job in the sense that you’ve never seemed like a typical ‘New York Rock Critic Establishment’ kind of guy? Your own voice has always seemed kind of outside that…

  Chuck:   Yeah. That’s what I would have guessed. And I was really kind of scared–not frightened, but nervous–when I came here. I really considered whether I would fit in. Oddly enough…I had this idea in my head that this city was filled with pretentious phonies, okay? And the ‘Rock Critic Establishment,’ which I may or may not be a part of…It’s not like I hang out with editors at Rolling Stone.

  Steven:   You mean you don’t go drinking with Joe Levy?

  Chuck:   I had the idea that the Rock Critic Establishment I perceived in my mind, were some of the biggest pretentious phonies here. But oddly enough, I kind of fit in New York better than any place I’ve ever lived in my life. For whatever reasons. And the reason may be that I’m as pretentious and as phony as anyone here–that’s not inconceivable! Maybe I’m just in denial. It’s not like I spend time out drinking with the editors of Spin or Rolling Stone. I really don’t. At all. There are certain writers I will go out with or go to shows with. But I’m not sure if I’m….I don’t know. Maybe I get invited to more press events or whatever. Places where there’s an open bar or something. More so than when I was a freelance writer or whatever. Maybe there are people who I know by face that I would not have known by face three years ago. I don’t feel like I’m more part of the Rock Critic Establishment now than before I got here.

  Steven:   Did being a freelance writer help you in being an Editor? Did you find yourself going, you know, as a freelancer I had to deal with so much of this crap…

  Chuck:   Oh, I think absolutely, but I had good editors and I had bad editors as a freelancer. I think the thing is, I definitely identified with what writers go through. I did it for 15 years. So I think I know when editing is bullshit, and I’ve definitely had editors who did bullshit editing–it was a control thing, it had nothing at all to do with improving writing, it had to do with the editors asserting power or trying to make you conform to, you know, the timid voice of whatever their publication was. And I think as someone who wrote for so long, I probably am naturally sensitive to that. Hopefully I won’t become less sensitive to it–I’ve been an editor now for three years–but I know what writers go through.

  On the other hand, as somebody who wrote for so long, I probably ask a lot out of writers, when they’re making pitches and stuff like that, because I know what I did, and I know how hard I worked to get assignments, and I expect writers to do the same. I mean, I expect to be convinced that something is worth covering and that somebody has something to say about it. I have hundreds of writers now…in a given year, I don’t know, you’d have to go back and look at the three years I’ve been there, but I would say I have somewhere between 100 and 200 writers to choose from, and a lot of them pitch the same things, and I only have a certain amount of space to fill every week, and it’s pretty small. So I can afford to be selective. I think, again–I don’t know if this is because I’m a writer or because I’m me–but I can kind of see through bullshit. You know? It sounds like I’m bragging, but I think the fact that I wrote for so long probably helps.

  Steven:   How did you sell yourself to Christgau for the job?

  Chuck:   Well, Christgau doesn’t do the hiring.

  Steven:   Well, with whoever does the hiring, was it based more on how you worked at the Voice as a freelancer, or did it have more to do with some preconceived idea of the section you presented?

  Chuck:   It wasn’t really like I was trying to sell myself that much. What happened was, I had finished doing an article for Eric Weisbard and he mentioned that the next piece I do, someone else would be Music Editor. I said, “Oh, you’re leaving?” I had no idea. And he’s like, “You didn’t know that?” And I said, “Of course, I didn’t know that.” I’m way out of the loop on those things. I’m just this writer in Philadelphia. It’s not like I talk to that many people who would even know. I wound up sending a resume–and Eric actually discouraged me, if I remember–but I sent a resume to Doug Simmons and I wound up being interviewed by him, and a lot of people applied for the position but I don’t think I had a resume ready at the time. I threw it–pieced it–together then and there, and Doug mentioned to me that he wanted a proposal on how I would change the section, or if I would change it. Obviously, I’d spent enough time over the years whining about what I didn’t like about the Village Voice music section, so a proposal was not that hard to accomplish. So I did that and honestly, I can’t remember what I wrote in the letter. I think I said I wanted there to be more humor and less, you know, use of the word “deconstruction.” [Laughs]

  Steven:   Maybe wider genres to be covered?

  Chuck:   I don’t know. It’s not like the genre coverage was not wide. I can’t remember if that was an issue or not. I don’t know if it’s wider now than when Eric was here. I can’t say that for a fact. It’s not like Eric was opposed to covering pop stuff. I guess they liked the proposal I wrote–I guess they liked other things. I have a journalism degree and most music critics don’t. It would be pure conjecture for me to tell you why they hired me. Probably because, maybe, they wanted someone to shake things up a little bit. My sensibilities are probably at odds to what the last few music editors…Maybe they were looking for that. Maybe they liked the fact that I was not a New Yorker. Maybe they liked that I would have settled for less money than the people I was up against. I’m not kidding–I think that’s conceivable. If I was up against people from Spin andRolling Stone, maybe they asked for more money.

  Steven:   Do you have any idea who you were up against for the job?

  Chuck:   I don’t wanna get into that. I mean, I think I know a couple of the people, but there’s no point in…

  Steven:   What preconceived idea of a section did you have, and have you been able to accomplish that?

  Chuck:    I don’t know how much of a preconceived idea I had of the section. It’s not like, “Oh my God, I’m going to go in there and tear things up.” There are writers I really like who I think deserve to be in the section. And I think they wound up in there. In as much as they wanted to do the work: some did and some did not. There’s probably some people who I wished would have done more in the last couple of years. I don’t know if I expanded the genres but I like to think that I expanded the voices. There was a certain amount of academic detachment in the writing in the music section. I think it was–it took itself really, really, really seriously in a way that sometimes works but often doesn’t. [Laughs] So I think I affected that balance. Maybe, I mean three years ago…so much has changed in music in the last three years it’s hard for me to remember what I didn’t like about the coverage. Maybe there were writers who I thought should be in the section that weren’t. Honestly, the new writers that I’ve brought in are mostly people who I never even heard of three years ago. It’s not like in three years I wanted to discover Tony Green, Kelefa Sanneh, or Nick Catucci or Amy Phillips and have them in the section. I had never heard of them. I’m always hearing from new writers and I’m happy with what the section is now.

  Steven:   As Music Editor, have you had to kill many articles, and do you normally give the writers a chance to do re-writes?

  Chuck:   Usually I give the writer a chance to do a re-write but honestly, I don’t kill that many. I have killed some. If it’s an assigned piece–a couple of times I’ve offered them a chance to do a re-write and they haven’t done one, in which case I wind up just filing a kill fee or whatever. Some people have done a re-write or two and it still didn’t work so I had to kill the piece. Maybe once or twice, it’s conceivable that I didn’t give them a chance to a re-write, but it just seems fair. I was a writer for a long time. Maybe there’s a piece that’s so timely that a re-write would not make sense. Some pieces, though, have run at a third of the length that I assigned them at!

  Steven:   From your experience, do editors at Spin and Rolling Stone put writers through anything like the process of editing that you and Christgau put them through at theVoice?

  Chuck:   I don’t know. I have no idea what they do now.

  Steven:   I’m talking about when you were there, writing for those magazines…

  Chuck:   I did line edits over the phone with Rolling Stone and Spin reviews. I don’t know if they were the same kinds of edits as Voice reviews. I was asked to re-write certain parts. Yeah. The answer, as far as I know, is they do. And I remember doing that.

  Steven:   But the process was different, maybe not as specific or detailed.

  Chuck:   I wouldn’t say that. Some. They were line edits. I’m not saying they were always right. Some editors were right sometimes, and some were wrong, maybe all the time. They would zero in or lines and say change this or cut this. There were other places I think didn’t do that, but Rolling Stone and Spin did.

  Steven:   I’m pretty sure your first piece of professional music journalism was published in the Voice. There’s a story about this–you were in the army in Germany and you wrote a letter to Robert Christgau. Tell me about that story and how that parlayed into assignments.

  Chuck:   Basically, I had started voting in the Voice music critics poll, I think senior year in college, and I can’t remember how I got a ballot. I think that Bob, in one of his “Pazz & Jop” essays, had said, you know, people always feel like they’ve been knighted when they’re asked to vote in the “Pazz & Jop” poll. I don’t know if it’s still like that or not, but he said, go ahead, knight yourself, if you’re writing about music regularly; you know, send us a note and we’ll send you a ballot. And I can’t remember if I–I think I must have sent him a letter in the mail, and he started sending me a ballot, because I was writing–my senior year in college I was reviewing a lot of records for my college paper.

  And so I probably voted that year, and then a couple subsequent years. At any rate, I got my journalism degree on an Army ROTC scholarship, so when I graduated college I owed the Army four years as an Officer. So I went to Signal Officer Basic Course in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and then went to Germany, and…I kept reading music criticism. I think I was subscribing to the Voice, and probably Creem, and I think I even got the Boston Phoenix–weeks late ’cause I was in Germany. The third year I voted in the Voicepoll–actually I probably, now that I think about it, wasn’t really eligible. I was probably eligible in my senior year in college because I was reviewing records, but once I went into the Army I wasn’t reviewing records. But I’d get the ballot every year and I’d vote anyway!

  So, the third year I voted I attached to my ballot–and with no intention at all of it getting printed; it was more like me letting off steam–an 11-page letter about the state of music and about music criticism, and Bob printed a good chunk of it, quoted me in the essay, and printed my list. But actually, before that, I got a check in the mail from theVillage Voice, I was in Germany, and I was like, what is this check for?! It never occurred to me that any of it would be printed for publication, more like I was just writing a letter because it was in me, maybe I was letting off steam because I was doing Army stuff all week.

  And of course I felt pretty elated about that, you know. And Bob, I think, got a hold of my mom in Michigan, maybe by calling Information or something, and asked me to start writing. And the first thing I actually wrote for him was a review of Bad Religion’s Into the Unknown, I think it’s called, which is like the one album they still don’t have in print ’cause it sounds like ’70s music. [laughs] It’s probably their one really good album. Then I started writing fairly regularly for the Voice–I reviewed Too Tough to Die by the Ramones, I wrote about John Anderson, blah blah blah, Done With Mirrors by Aerosmith, and talked about how Aerosmith were rap music before rap music existed, and Rick Rubin read that article, and he got Aerosmith together with Run-D.M.C., supposedly after reading that article.

  So I wrote all kinds of stuff in the next three years when I was in the Army, both in Germany and in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and by the time I got out of the Army I assumed I would go work for some suburban paper in Michigan, you know, doing journalism stuff, but I was getting calls from Rolling Stone, and I guess Spin–I don’t know. I did a heavy metal roundup for the Voice, and I think yeah, magazines called me asking me to write about heavy metal records. I mean, maybe I pursued it a little bit, but as I remember, mostly it was them contacting me, so by the time I got out of the Army I just sort of fell into freelancing full-time.

  Steven:   So you didn’t pitch much? Or was it a combination of both?

  Chuck:   I think it was a combination. I guess they would see things I’d written in the Voice. I think what was kind of my ace-in-the-hole was that there weren’t that many people writing about heavy metal, so I kind of got pigeonholed, and this is really pre-Metallica/Jane’s Addiction/Faith No More–when heavy metal really kind of became okaywith critics–and for some reason I was perceived as this guy who could write about metal, and I guess make it interesting.

  Steven:   Were you writing much about disco music or soul during this time?

  Chuck:   I was writing about everything. I mean, that’s why it was kind of odd to get pigeonholed. I reviewed a Nile Rodgers album for the Voice…I was probably more hard rock, but I was doing late ’80s indie stuff on Homestead and SST and Touch and Go–you know,boy indie music, loud guitar indie rock. I’d have to go back and find what was the first soul or disco record I wrote about, but it wasn’t like I was just writing about the one thing. So when you ask me if I was writing about that stuff early on, I don’t know, maybe in the very first year or two not as much, but I was listening to it. In the first Top 10 the Voice printed by me, I voted for Al Green and Nile Rodgers and ESG–but I was also listening to a lot of rap music. I started listening to rap music in 1981–”Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel”…I bought Funky 4 + 1 “That’s the Joint” the year it came out, based on reviews I had read in the Voice. So I don’t know why the perception would be that that was something I eventually delved into. I mean, I think I was pigeonholed to a certain extent early on as being this–well, I probably pushed the pigeonhole to a certain extent–but of being this white, male, heterosexual guy from the Midwest, who, you know, grew up on Ted Nugent or Aerosmith records, which I kind of was, to a certain extent, but I was also a new waver, and I had heard dance music all my life, but I think it was more like they needed someone to write about that stuff, so I was The Guy. I wasn’t listening exclusively to that, or even more than other stuff–does that answer the question?

  Steven:   Yeah, and certainly you had no problem with that, because you were a freelancer trying to get music writing, so if that’s how they want to see it…

  Chuck:   Absolutely, and what really helps a freelancer is to find a niche, and I found a niche pretty early on. But to define me by that niche seems, especially after…18 years later, when people still define me by that niche–that’s bizarre!

  Steven:   I personally don’t understand this, but you’ve always been compared to Lester Bangs, but when you actually read your stuff, it’s much much more like Christgau–that to me seems like the much bigger influence than Lester Bangs. So why do you think people always compare your writing to Lester Bangs?

  Chuck:   I don’t know–I mean, do people still?

  Steven:   Well, I mean, this is when you were writing–you’re hardly writing anymore.

  Chuck:   I think that there’s probably a certain kind of character I created, you know…

  Steven:   Does it bother you?

  Chuck:   I don’t care–no, I’m flattered by it, why would it bother me? I mean, I read more Christgau than Bangs early on, and it wasn’t until later–it’s not like I grew up reading rock criticism. I started reading rock magazines when I started writing about rock music. So it wasn’t like in high school I was reading Circus or Creem. The big turning point was Bob’s 1978 “Pazz & Jop” essay, “The Triumph of the New Wave.” I was probably as fascinated by the math–that there were people sending in these lists and giving points to the records, all these records I’d never heard of–as I was by what he wrote, though I did find what he wrote really intriguing. But I don’t know that my style is much like Bob’s, either. I don’t think I particularly write like Bob or Lester.

  Steven:   Well, I can see more of a correlation to Christgau than to Lester Bangs.

  Chuck:   I think what people have called my “gonzo” side, which probably shows up more in Stairway to Hell–I think it’s my fucking-around side. And I will let my writing do things that Christgau would not let his writing do, like go off on tangents. Bob’s writing really tends to stay within a box, when he’s writing about something, whereas I would take off from a point and go in different directions. And I think there was probably a certain kind of energy to it, or humor to it, that people associated with Bangs, and I think also, you know, I’m from Detroit, I like hard rock, I probably, you know–I don’t know, there was probably a certain vulgarity to my writing, I mean there are things I had in common with Bangs, but initially Christgau was more of an influence, though I don’t know that my writing is more like one of them than the other one. I don’t particularly think it’s like either, though on the other hand it doesn’t confound me that people would see some commonality.

  Steven:   Well, when you were reading the Voice back then, what other writers come to mind that were writing pieces that said something to you?

  Chuck:   I don’t know, there were individual pieces here and there, stuff by Ken Tucker, Michael Freedberg, Greg Tate–those are off the top of my head. Or Davitt Sigerson writing about the Gap Band or the Bellamy Brothers–pretty mainstream stuff, I…

  Steven:   For the Voice he wrote that?

  Chuck:   I think so. Freedberg’s stuff was probably more in the Phoenix, writing about Italo-disco stuff, or just disco in general. To what extent they were influences, I don’t know. I mean, I saw Meltzer pieces in the ’80s, and of course Bangs. But the Christgau stuff I really liked was the “Consumer Guide.” I really liked the idea of, you know, these concise little reviews. Which is another thing I probably have in common with him. The way Stairway to Hell is written–the voice is probably not Christgau-like, but the formis Christgau-like. These kind of little pocket-size reviews. Stairway‘s run a little longer, probably an average of 250 words each, as opposed to a “Consumer Guide” thing, which might run closer to 100. But I mean, I think that was definitely an influence; Bob’s love of math was probably an influence, oddly enough! I’d always been fascinated with math as a kid.

  Steven:   And baseball statistics, too…

  Chuck:   Yeah, I was a baseball fan in a lot of ways because of statistics, and knowing which team somebody was on–I loved the idea of categorizing, there’s just something…I mean, it’s geeky, it’s totally geeky, but somehow, that’s how my mind works, and that’s really a theme in The Accidental Evolution of Rock ‘n’ Roll–I mean, it’s the theme. But it’s also a theme of Meltzer’s Aesthetics of Rock, the idea of taking what music is out there and dividing it into genres in other ways than how genres are usually divided.

  Steven:   Yeah–like ‘amputee rock’ and…

  Chuck:   Yeah. I think a lot of them are silly, but I think I probably wound up saying things about the music–or I hope I did–through the back door. I think there’s a sense of play there. I think the sense of play in my writing has more in common with some previous critics than other previous critics, for whatever reason, I don’t know.

  Steven:   Okay. So is the ‘metal writer’ tag unfair?

  Chuck:   Well, Stairway to Hell happened, because…Okay, I had done metal roundups in various places. I initially did one in the Voice, like in ’84…it seems like maybeRolling Stone maybe asked me to do one in ’85 or so, and I never did it–or maybe I did it and it got killed–I can’t remember. I think I was just in the Army and too busy, and I never pulled it off. But, at any rate, a couple years down the line I was asked to write the guide to heavy metal by Harmony Books. And what they wanted me to do was an encyclopedia of heavy metal, where I would go back and listen to every Scorpions record, every Judas Priest record, every Iron Maiden record, every Motley Crue record, and grade them–sort of like those Rolling Stone Record Guides?

  Steven:   Or Martin Popoff’s book that came out later.

  Chuck:   Yeah, maybe like that, whatever, but you know, I would like have an essay on Iron Maiden, and on top of it I would rate all the albums with stars or letter grades or whatever.

  Steven:   Did you talk them out of that?

  Chuck:   No, what I suggested–I would not have been capable of it. I didn’t own any Iron Maiden or Scorpions or Judas Priest records, I’ve barely listened to any now! I still don’t know if I’ve listened to an Iron Maiden album all the way through, ever in my life, and I don’t know if I ever will. I’m told the first couple ones with their first singer are good–I don’t know. But it would’ve been way too much work, in the sense that–for one thing it would’ve been an expense, ’cause I would’ve had to go out and buy all these records. So what I suggested is, why don’t I just pick out my 500 favorite heavy metal records? And what that allowed me to do was to define heavy metal how I wanted to define it. You know, as a kind of music with loud guitars or whatever. Because the idea of this prescribed definition for the genre didn’t interest me anyway, it had nothing to do with how I think about music, and with what I’d been doing with music since I started writing about it. So, I just went through my record collection, you know, and pulled out everything that would fit, and a lot of Stairway to Hell was based on condensed versions of reviews I had written when the records came out. But anybody who’s seenStairway to Hell knows that it’s hardly a heavy metal book in any constricted definition of the term. If anything, why, when Stairway to Hell came out I wasn’t pigeonholed as an indie rock fan?–’cause there’s as much indie rock in that book as there is anything else…there’s five Sonic Youth albums!

  Steven:   Did anyone get mad because of that?

  Chuck:   Of course.

  Steven:   Did the publishers say, Sonic Youth? Teena Marie? This guy’s not writing about metal!

  Chuck:   No, because they liked my writing, but of course people have gotten mad over the years. If you go to Amazon.com, there’s really funny reviews, saying, you know, it has nothing to do with heavy metal…

  Steven:   It’s still in print, right?

  Chuck:   No, it’s been remaindered, I think. I think both books have. But depending on what your definition of heavy metal is, maybe it does have nothing to do with heavy metal, I don’t know–it has to do with heavy metal as how I define it. No, the book company liked it, they didn’t give me a problem with that. But at any rate, yeah, if you look at the cover–both editions–I mean, it looks like a heavy metal book. So yeah, that’s part of the reason why I was pigeonholed. But I mean, if I had been asked to do a guide to, like, 500 country records or funk records or bubblegum records or electronic records, I would’ve done that, and it would’ve been just as fun, and it would probably have been just as good a book. I mean, maybe or maybe not–I probably couldn’t do 500 singer-songwriter records.

  Steven:   Even today, at an advanced age, does the tag bother you?

  Chuck:   It doesn’t affect me that much anymore. Toward the end of my–why do I say “toward the end” of my freelance career? I could freelance again–it would bother me whenever a Scorpions album came out, or a Judas Priest album came out, and I would get calls from Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly, asking me to write about it, as if I was some kind of expert on the Scorpions! And I remember I actually reviewed a Scorpions album, for Entertainment Weekly, and I probably gave it a C+ or B-, and I thought it had one really good song on it. That bothered me. But probably what bothered me more is what they wouldn’t ask me to write about, that the people weren’t asking me to write about Liz Phair records or Hole records or Beck records, you know? Which I never really understood–it just seemed really kind of simplistic, the way editors made assignments. On the other hand, maybe I filled a hole, maybe it’s just that they thought other people couldn’t write about this stuff. For all I know, I was perceived as a mediocre writer, but at least someone who can write about this stuff. I don’t know! Once in a while I’ll get a call from some upstart magazine saying, you know, we’ve decided we should have a review of the new Journey album–you’re the person who should write about it! And a couple times I’ve gotten pissed off. I’m like, why the fuck are you calling me about new Journey album?! Because I liked “Don’t Stop Believing” once? It’s really idiotic that after 18 years people still perceive my writing that way. I attribute that to the laziness of editors.

  Steven:   And as an editor now you certainly don’t pigeonhole writers…

  Chuck:   I’m sure I do! [laughs] I’m sure there are writers I do the exact same thing with, but I am open–if Simon Reynolds pitched me a Bruce Springsteen album, God, I’d probably go for it in a second. Hi Simon! You know. I had Greg Tate write about Bruce Springsteen the year before last. I’m more open to…actually, the vast majority of pieces in the Voice are ones that were pitched to me by writers. Like, if a new Cornershop album is coming out, or a new Eminem, I might have to think about, hmm, who would be really good to write about Eminem, or who would be really good to write about Cornershop? I ran a Drive By Truckers lead review recently, and I’m like, who would be really good to write about this? And it’s just like, wait a minute, it’s a concept album about Alabama, I should get Don Allred because he’s the same age as those guys and he grew up there. There are times when it will occur to me that X-person would be really good to write about it, but I don’t know that genre comes into it that much. There are certain records that have to be reviewed, and I try to think of who would write the most interesting thing about it…

  Steven:   So, for instance, George Smith, writing about Yes, is that something–he must’ve pitched that, certainly you didn’t…

  Chuck:   George Smith has probably been published almost as much as anybody in the section the last couple of years, and he’s made almost no pitches; almost every single one of his pieces is sent to me on spec.

  Steven:   Oh really?

  Chuck:   Yeah. He’s had one or two…actually, I told him I wanted him to write about Crack the Sky, but he’s never done it. Maybe a couple of the pieces he’s done–a couple of the sidebars–have been specifically assignments, but I would say 95% of them are just–and he’s the only writer who does it–he just sends me stuff out of the blue, on spec. I mean, there’s other spec pieces I’ve printed, but he’s by far, he’s the one who the highest percentage is on spec. If I print it I print it, if I don’t–you know, there’s stuff I’ve never printed that he’s sent in. The thing is, he’s really smart in the sense that he’s canny: he writes these little sidebar things, and I’ll have that hole to fill, you know what I mean? Where I can fit a 300-word piece, and I’ll just happen to have one of his on hand that I find really entertaining. But it’s not like, oh my gosh, I have to find someone to write about the new Yes album, I know, I’ll call up George Smith! I don’t really give a fuck! Honestly, if someone pitched me the new Yes album, I’d be like, fuck you!

  Steven:   Right, I was shocked to see it in the section.

  Chuck:   He writes these really entertaining 300-400 words, but it wasn’t a pitch. But I mean, the idea of someone pitching me a Yes album, I’d be like, nobody cares about Yes, but the article’s already written, it’s already entertaining, you know? So, he’s smart, because the vast majority I’ve run by him–if somebody pitched it to me, I would not assign. He pitched to me–I don’t think he’ll mind me saying this–he pitched to me the Kiss box set, and I was like, no, I’m not interested in the Kiss box set. BUT, if he had sent me–or maybe somebody else–in fact, a couple other people pitched me the Kiss box set, and I could care less–I mean, I couldn’t care less, just like I couldn’t care less about most box sets by bands who have been written about to death over the years, especially really minor bands like Kiss–BUT if he just sent me something on spec, it’s conceivable that one week I’d have room for it!

  Steven:   It seems like that would be easier than trying to pitch…

  Chuck:   There have definitely been times when he’s tried to pitch me stuff, and I’ve turned him down.

  Steven:   What about writers on the other side of the spectrum, a guy like, for instance, Milo Miles, doing the African stuff. I mean, is he pitching that kind of stuff, or is it, “Here’s a good African CD, I’ve got to call Milo.”

  Chuck:   I think I called him about Rachid Taha, I decided that we really needed a Rachid Taha piece, and it occurred to me that he’s written really well about Algerian rai before, and he might be interested, so I know I asked him that. The blues piece I believe he pitched to me. Oddly enough, Milo’s stuff, we always seem to end up running it during a week I’m on vacation, so I think I’ve only edited him once. I mean, I’ve only printed him, like, maybe five or six pieces, but I think that all but one of them has been edited by Bob–I think I edited the African one.

  Steven:   Do you edit Christgau’s music stuff?

  Chuck:   Yeah, almost all of it.

  Steven:   You do?

  Chuck:   Yeah, I edit both the “Rock & Roll &” column and the “Consumer Guide.”

  Steven:   Was the first time you did that–I’m sure you’re used to it now–but the first time, was that kind of a surreal experience?

  Chuck:   Sure, I mean it’s a little bit intimidating, you know, because you really look up to this person, and part of me was like, how could I possibly improve Bob Christgau’s writing? So, I don’t know if “surreal” is the right word…but I was nervous, especially because he was my first editor. But I don’t know, I think we’ve developed a rapport, it seems to work pretty well.

  Steven:   No problems there, it’s just business?

  Chuck:   It’s, you know, it’s the job: the Music Editor edits him. And I’ve edited, I think, three “Pazz & Jop” essays so far. And I’ll make suggestions, but–I don’t know, it seems to work.

  Steven:   Accidental Evolution, your second book, it started out somehow as a book about Def Leppard’s Hysteria album. How did that transformation come about?

  Chuck:   Well, it was sort of a book about Def Leppard’s Hysteria album. It was originally called The Accidental Evolution of Rock’n'Roll Through the Eyes of Def Leppard’s Hysteria, and the idea was to go off on all these different tangents, but each chapter would start–I would start talking about a song on Hysteria, and I would see where it took me. I was contracted to do that, right after Stairway came out. By the time I turned it in, it was probably twice as long as what finally wound up coming out a few years later. Both of my editors at Crown/Harmony had left. One of them had left the publishing industry entirely, and one of them had left to edit text books. At any rate, the people who were at Harmony had no idea what the fuck to do with it, and at least in part because nobody cared about Def Leppard anymore. You know, you’re talking a couple years after Nirvana or whenever. It probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense when I was contracted to do it; it made way less sense a couple years later. [laughs] So I think I shopped the manuscript around otherwise, and eventually, I guess, when Da Capo agreed to publish it, I think that–I can’t remember whether it was my idea or their idea that the Def Leppard theme would be eliminated, and it would just be this kind of thematic, you know–this thing with chapters! Def Leppard are still probably in there–if you look in the index, I think they get as many mentions as anybody except, oddly enough, Bob Dylan. Why have I never been pigeonholed as a Bob Dylan critic? I have no idea.

  Steven:   I don’t know…

  Chuck:   So if you count the index, Def Leppard and Dylan have the most, and those are remnants from the original part of the book. It’s not even like–I don’t know, for some reason Hysteria struck me as this neat frame–it probably could’ve been any album, but at the time it seemed like this frame that I could go off on a lot of directions.

  Steven:   I love this picture and caption: “For 15 years, Kix were the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.”

  Chuck:   Oh yeah, yeah. I might still believe that. I mean, they definitely weren’t the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in 1987, which is one of those 15 years, ’cause that’s the yearAppetite For Destruction came out, but overall, yeah, I think they’re probably my favorite from that time period–if I had to pick out a rock band who made records that I consistently enjoy…Although it’s been a while since I’ve put a Kix record on. I think I played “911″–I can’t remember which album it’s from–I had a heavy metal radio show onVillage Voice Radio called “Stairway to Hell,” for about seven months last year, and I think I played the Kix song “911″ a little bit after 9/11.

  Steven:   Did anyone from that band ever get in touch with you?

  Chuck:   Well, I interviewed them once. I interviewed them for the Voice. I did a piece, I think it was when they still had “Rock & Roll Quarterly,” and I took a manuscript of the book, and I showed it to them, with I think four of their albums in the Top 50, and they seemed to think it was a joke. Like I had put it together just for them or something!

  Steven:   I can imagine that. When they saw that they were in the Top 5…

  Chuck:   I think they have two albums in the Top 10, and four in the Top 50, and then, in the second edition of the book, the ’90s edition, they have two others pretty high up–is it two?–at least one more…

  Steven:   Yeah, I was just curious what their reaction to that was.

  Chuck:   They were amused. I think the thing with Kix, even though they apparently really had fun writing those songs and performing, I don’t think–it was almost like, they didn’t think in terms of it being Art, I guess, in any way. And I’m not saying that, oh, that’s why they’re great, ’cause a lot of people who do think in terms of art probably make great records too, but I think it was just like, why would anybody care about us?! And obviously they took pride in their craft–in their rhythm, in their sense of humor, and in their singing–but it wasn’t the type of pride that it ever occurred to them would be translated into record reviews. Although someone actually reviewed the first or second Kix album in the Voice. I think that might be–is that how I found out about them? Someone–it could have been Sigerson, or it could have been Considine–reviewed, I think, the first Kix album and Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No together in ’81 or something like that, I guess for Bob. So it wasn’t like I was the very first person who wrote about them. Considine seems to like them in retrospect. There was a later edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide where he gave a couple of the albums four stars.

  Kix are something–aside from the fact that they sound like a combination of AC/DC and the Cars, which is custom-made for me–they’re one kind of a band I like in that they come out of a genre that doesn’t think of itself as art, but at the same time they’re obviously very meticulous about the craft that they put into it; they’re eccentric within a non-eccentric genre, if that makes any sense. And obviously, one of the things I like, whether you’re talking about disco or bubblegum or country or metal–and other people don’t like, for whatever reasons–one of the things the music can do that I’m drawn to is eccentricity within a sphere or a kind of music that’s not normally considered eccentric. For some reason I seem to think that that makes the eccentricity more believable or more fun or whatever. And Kix are a really good example of that.

  Steven:   I ask every writer I interview–the first time you were published in Rolling Stone, did that mean anything to you? And do you remember who you wrote about…

  Chuck:   Wow…

  Steven:   When it was published, and who edited it. And did it mean anything to you, like, Wow, this is Rolling Stone!

  Chuck:   I don’t remember off the top of my head what my first Rolling Stone review would’ve been. God, you’ve asked me a couple questions, like what was my first soul or r&b review–I wonder if my phone will stretch into the room where I have my filing cabinets? I don’t think it does, but…

  Steven:   Do you remember who was editing the record reviews section at the time, what editor you worked for at Rolling Stone?

  Chuck:   No, I don’t remember. [laughs] That’s so bad! Whoever it was, I’m sure they’re a wonderful person! At that place and Spin, it always seemed like there was a lot of turnover, and I honestly can’t…I do remember my first lead review, would’ve been–is it my only lead review in Rolling Stone?–actually, no, I think I did one on the Offspring later–I think I only had two lead reviews in Rolling Stone, and the first one was Super Hits of the Seventies, the Rhino compilation, and I think I did the Offspring later. But my first review…I can’t remember!

  Steven:   Well, let me ask you this, did it mean anything to you because it was Rolling Stone, or was it just another music magazine?

  Chuck:   I never put Rolling Stone on any kind of pedestal. I mean, honestly, Steven, so much of it happened so fast, that even Creeem, which I had much more of an emotional attachment to than Rolling Stone–I can’t even say that I went, “Oh my God, I’m in Creem.” When I was first published in the Village Voice it meant a lot to me. The other ones were almost like these dominoes, just falling, but it wasn’t like–I mean, it sounds cynical–it made me happy–but it wasn’t like, “Oh my God, I’m in Rolling Stone!” But again, it’s not like I was a kid who grew up reading Rolling Stone or who even grew up reading Creem. I basically discovered these magazines as I was starting to write.

Steven:   This might be a stupid question, but how did a heavy metal writer like you avoid the teen metal fan mags like Circus and Hit Parader? And what did you think of those magazines?

Chuck:   Well, a) I wasn’t a heavy metal writer. And b) I don’t even know that they would’ve had me. I mean, Creem, I liked more–I don’t know if they paid more–I was living in Michigan, so Creem was geographically closer to me, but I didn’t really know that much about Hit Parader or those other metal magazines. I have been printed–I think in Rip! once, but usually it’s stuff I’d done–usually if I got printed in those magazines it was pieces I’d done for somebody else that got killed, so I just sort of sent them around. I had a Motorhead thing that ended up running in Rip!, an interview with Lemmy. But, I don’t know–it wasn’t like I was aiming for those magazines, and I think that–I honestly don’t even know that much about those. My daughter now buys–who’s 12–I went back to Philly last weekend, and she bought an issue of Metal Edge. It didn’t seem that good, but she bought Terrorizer out of England which seemed really cool. They had their Top 50 metal albums of the year, and–this is another tangent, but, umm, humor me–and it was a pretty cool Top 50 ’cause not only did it have Radiohead and Nick Cave as two of the best 50 metal albums of the year, it had three underground hip-hop albums: Cannibal Ox, Techno Animal, and 2nd Gen. Not to mention a lot of pretty cool-sounding gothic stuff. I’m kind of into the Scandinavian gothic stuff, but stuff that I’d never heard of, along with, like, the Slayer album, the Tool album, or whatever. And so, it was interesting to me because their definition of heavy metal was probably almost as wide as the Stairway to Hell definition. And it’s the first metal magazine I’ve seen since–although Kerrang! might be that way, I don’t really see Kerrang!–it was one of the first metal mags I’ve seen since Creem Metal that I’ve seen–and it’s not like I look at metal magazines, so I could be completely wrong–that allowed itself to use that wide a definition. And it had Top 10s by people–you were allowed to vote for singles too–and one person voted for Moldy Peaches, one person voted for the Strokes, one person voted for “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child, one person voted for “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” by Eve and Gwen Stefani. So at any rate, my daughter’s buying heavy metal magazines now, and she’s a big Kittie fan. I don’t know what that has to do with the question!

Steven:   Well, it was just about teen metal mags.

Chuck:   I don’t know, I never had that much interest in them and they never had that much interest in me. Which was good, because the feeling was mutual!

Steven:   You wrote for Creem in the ’90s–and before that, of course–and in the early ’90s you wrote a cover story…

Chuck:   About Def Leppard.

Steven:   Adrenalize.

Chuck:   Yeah, you know it’s funny, I think you said that you really liked that piece–I don’t think it’s all that great a piece. And maybe it is good, but I’m kind of embarrassed about it, ’cause I’m writing about this Def Leppard album that is really bad. [laughs] What is it called, Adrenalize or something?

Steven:   Yes, Adrenalize. That’s one of my favorite pieces by you.

Chuck:   I don’t remember it being a very good album, and it’s weird because it’s one of those deals that you have to do as a freelance rock critic, where you really liked the previous album [laugh], so, you–okay, I’m gonna interview this band! And I didn’t particularly like that record.

Steven:   Well, you wrote about it like you liked it…

Chuck:   But, I might have found interesting things to say about it…

Steven:   You did…

Chuck:   But as I remember, it’s kind of a lame record.

Steven:   Well, what happened is, I read that article and then I backtracked to Stairway to Hell. I think that was the article where I discovered your stuff.

Chuck:   See, I also find it–I mean, I’m flattered by that–but I also find it interesting because I just consider that whole era of Creem like this really…I mean, it wasn’t even the real Creem. Once they moved out to L.A.–and I think I was doing maybe a monthly singles column, and occasional record reviews, I don’t think I did a whole lot of features, but it’s just like…for one thing, that’s probably the worst era of my writing. It’s all so like…I mean, the early ’90s, I think my writing is probably kind of lame during those years. I think I was probably fishing both for places to write and things to write about. I mean, that’s probably the closest I came, and apparently this happens to a lot of rock critics when they’re around 30. I think I was feeling pretty burned out, and I think if I had gotten out of it, that’s when I would have done it. And it seems to be the age where a lot of people, a lot of rock critics, do get out of it. But any rate, that has nothing to do with the article, and I’m glad you liked the article…

Steven:   That’s how I discovered you.

Chuck:   But it’s kind of funny, it just, it looks ugly, and, it’s like–I wrote it for the fake Creem! But anyway, I’m glad that you liked it.

Steven:   Writing for Creem–not in the ’90s, but before that–was there some kind of history there for you?

Chuck:   Oh, it definitely had a history. And I mean, when I say I can’t remember jumping up and down the first time I wrote for them–which I might be wrong, maybe I just don’t remember jumping up and down–I definitely, at least until it left Birmingham [Michigan], and when it lookedlike the old Creem, before it moved to L.A. and turned into that bigger tabloid piece of shit, I definitely felt part of the history. And I would seek out, when I could find them, those old Creems. And probably in some ways I was consciously molding my style off not any one particular writer, but just the writing style of that old Creem. And what’s weird is that in the late ’80s–it might actually apply more to Creem Metal than to Creemitself–was that you had these people who could write about music and were so knowledgeable, but at the same time they wouldn’t really take it that seriously, they kind of knew that it was a joke. And it wasn’t like, look at us, we’re making a joke, ha ha, aren’t you impressed, that kind of smug thing that you get in Spin, which is just fucking despicable! I mean, there is such a difference between the kind of humor in Creem and, you know, the forced kind of humor that Spin would attempt. But it was loose, and it was funny, and there were real individual stylists, and I don’t just mean the big names, but I mean people like Gregg Turner or Richard Riegel or Rick Johnson, who were just fucking brilliant! I mean, they were unbelievably funny, and unbelievably smart. And they had unbelievably individual voices. And it’s really the only time I think that happened in the course of rock criticism. And it wasn’t just in the ’70s; I think that probably from the ’70s through to the time they went bankrupt in Michigan, there really was that feeling there. And I’m not saying it was a feeling in the offices, it was a feeling in the magazine. That’s the only time–I mean, outside the Village Voice music section, which is different–but it’s the only time I really felt part of something bigger, and it probably helped my writing in a lot of ways. Writing for Rolling Stone and Spin never made my writing better; it never motivated me. In Creem, you just want to be as good as those other guys. You wanted to be as smart as them, you want to be as funny as them. So yeah. And I mean, the captions were funny…

Frank Kogan has explained–and I don’t know whether this makes sense or not–that, what happened to rock criticism–he might be totally full of shit as far as this point goes–but, that at first it was something that came out of rock and then it turned into something that came out of journalism. And Creem may have been the high point of, like–although the metal magazines probably still do it, and probably certain teen magazines, or whatever–it’s like…Creem came out of rock. I’m not wording that right, and maybe Frank worded it better, but the magazine did what the music did, and that’s such a fucking cliche, but…just the letters section in Creem was so smart and so funny. My guess is that there will never be another music magazine like that, but maybe there will–and maybe there is one, maybe it’s online or somewhere, I don’t know.

Steven:   Of all the editors you’ve worked for over the years, does one stand out as teaching you something invaluable, and if so, which one?

Chuck:   Yeah, there’s ones that stand out for me in ways that…I would never fucking do that as an editor! Probably the editors that taught me most were the really bad ones and I’m not gonna say who they were. You know, the ones who would always insist on there being a “nut graph” for a piece, or would randomly rearrange your paragraphs, or stick words like–you know, meaningless words like “nu metal” in articles, you know? Or, you know, when you’re talking to them on the phone it completely sounds like they’re doing something else. [laughs] But, I mean Christgau’s a great editor. Christgau is, I mean, he is almost a scarily good editor, in the sense that he can really see through bullshit. I mean, he knows…and what’s weird is that he seems to be able to do this with all different types of writers–writers who write like him, and writers who write nothing like him. He’s really sympathetic with their voice–he makes you do your voice better.

Steven:   Yeah that’s what everybody says…

Chuck:   And he will really be able to single out lines, he’ll be like, “Chuck, you know that that’s a cliche.” And I think he’s the only editor who’s ever been really able to see through my shit like that. I mean, I think that his opinions–I know he wasn’t a fan of Stairway to Hell, and I think he’s really wrong not to be a fan of Stairway to Hell. I think that he doesn’t like when writing goes off in tangents, the way my writing does in Stairway to Hell, except that in Stairway to Hell it works. And Stairway to Hell would be far worse, far stiffer, far blander, and say far less about music, if it didn’t go off on tangents. So, he couldn’t have edited Stairway to Hell; he would’ve been a bad editor forStairway to Hell. For the Voice, he was a great editor. And a lot of my writing in the Voice would not have been as good if he had not edited it. I mean, he stands out. There were other people who were definitely good, too, but he stands out.

Steven:   Does Frank Kogan still publish Why Music Sucks?

Chuck:   Umm, not as far as I know. I don’t know. I mean, it seems like one came out last year or something, or the year before, but I think it was old stuff and I think it took him forever to put it out. I mean, I don’t know ’cause I wouldn’t have time to write for it if he did.

Steven:   How did you become aware of Frank’s magazine, and what about it did you love so much?

Chuck:   Umm, oh God, you’re kind of going back.

Steven:   Yeah, I know, but it was a fanzine that you used to write for…

Chuck:   Yeah, no, I really liked that and I really liked Radio On, Phil Dellio’s thing, and…oh God, I haven’t really thought about it that much lately. I don’t know whether I was aware of Frank’s writing through stuff he had done in the Voice [in the mid '80s]. But, I don’t know…Why Music Sucks and Radio On are the two fanzines that I know of that came closest to pulling off what Creem pulled off, in that it was like the writers were having a conversation with each other, and they really spurred themselves–they spurred each other to be better writers, to be more humorous, to be smarter, and it was just like a great fucking group of people! I mean, you had–honestly, probably the best people who were writing about music during those periods were writing for those two fanzines. And they were writing way better–I include myself in this–for those fanzines than they were for the professional ‘zines.

Steven:   Are you talking about people like Arsenio Orteza…

Chuck:   No, I’m talking about people like Rob Sheffield. I mean, Arsenio, I don’t know if he ever wrote that much for professional magazines outside of the Christian version of National Lampoon. [laughs] I’m kind of–I don’t know, maybe I’m giving him shit, or the Louisiana Entertainer or whatever…

Steven:   Oh the Times of Acadiana–he writes for the Times.

Chuck:   I don’t know, who else was in those places? Jack Thompson and Michael Freedberg and Sheffield…

Steven:   Chris Cook?

Chuck:   I mean, a lot of those people weren’t really professional critics. I mean, Chris Cook and Liz Armstrong and Arsenio Orteza and Don Allred and Phil Dellio…I mean, some of them were and some of them weren’t. And some of them I can’t really remember if they were, but…Sara Sherr–I’d have to pull out the issues. Plus Mary Gaitskill sometimes and Luc Sante–Now I’m talking about people who I’m intimidated about editing! They’re just–they’re way beyond being music critics. Those are great writers who happen to write about music once in a while–you know, Gaitskill and Sante. Those magazines worked as a conversation in the way Creem did, although it’s a really tiny–a real fractional version of Creem. I think Kogan said once that if Teena Marie was the Empire State Building, Sophie B. Hawkins was an ant standing next to the Empire State Building, but she was a really great ant. And probably if Creem was the Empire State Building, Why Music Sucks and Radio On were like ants standing next to it–they were Sophie B. Hawkins. But they were better than anything else at the time, and I mean, it’s a shame that they didn’t get bigger…and what was really cool was that there were probably writers who were really bad in them too [laughs], but somehow the bad writers made it better too; it really was the-whole-was-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts kinda thing.

Maybe they were really insular–I don’t know, I don’t read them that way, but maybe Creem was really insular at the time too. Maybe Creem was insular in a way that Rolling Stone or Spin aren’t–I don’t know. I don’t believe that it was, but maybe if Creem–or to a greater extent Why Music Sucks or Radio On–had a limitation, maybe it was a really closed conversation. I don’t think it was: I think people wrote in those magazines how people talk in a bar about music, or over dinner, or in the hallway. And I don’t think that people in Rolling Stone or Spin, or even the Village Voice do talk that way. I mean, sometimes they do, and probably more in the Voice than in Rolling Stone or Spin. I would hope more in the Village Voice since I’ve taken over as Editor. But, they [R.O. and WMS] gave you the freedom to fuck around, and I don’t see why people shouldn’tfuck around when they’re writing about music. It’s how people talk about music, you know. It’s like the gravity or the importance of a quarrel in a bar, or an argument on a playground. I don’t mean a fist fight…

Steven:   No, I know what you’re saying.

Chuck:   It gives it that intensity and that’s what makes the music important–not some air of self-importance or whatever.

Steven:   You touched on this earlier, but how many CD review pitches do you get a week? And as an editor, are you on the lookout for new writers, new voices?

Chuck:   That’s two different questions. I get tons. I’ll get e-mails…I don’t know, in a given week? If someone sends me an e-mail and they pitch me four different records, does that count as four or does it count as one? Or if they want to review two together? I get, I don’t know, somewhere between 20 and 50, maybe.

Steven:   Does it bother you that you get so many?

Chuck:   Of course not. I mean, is it a lot of work? Yeah! But, no, I like getting them, and I’ll tell writers to send me clips–I wanna be familiar with somebody’s writing before I give them an assignment, and I tell them, when you send me a pitch, you need to prove to me two things: a) that the music you want to write about deserves to be covered; and b) that you can cover it better than anybody else in the world, that you can, you know, make me more interested in it, that you have more interesting things to say about it. And writers will make mistakes on both counts, you know what I mean? And I don’t like when I get a pitch where it’s just a list: “I want to write about the new M2M album, and…” you know, whatever, although writers I’m more familiar with I’m more open to that.

Steven:   Well, the younger writers, they don’t know how to make a pitch.

Chuck:   Especially with new writers, it really doesn’t give me anything to go on. The more familiar I am with the writer’s work, the more they can get away with just saying…I mean, Joshua Clover can call me up and say, “I want to write about the new Creed record,” and I’m not gonna be like, well, what do you have to say about the new Creed record, Joshua? Since, boy, I know Joshua would have really interesting things to say about the Creed record. RJ Smith can call me up and say, “I want to write about the new Eminem record or the new DJ Shadow record,” you know, and I know he’s gonna come up with a good piece. Whereas with new writers, or writers who aren’t on the level of RJ Smith or Joshua Clover, whether they’re new or not, I’m gonna make them prove it. And there’s probably writers who think I’m an asshole for doing that, but the thing is, I have a really limited amount of space, there are things that have to be covered because they are important, and, especially for marginal records, I have nothing else to go on. And I have to weigh the different possibilities–I want my section to be as good as it possibly can be. And there are certain–that means that I can’t assign everything to everybody. And if somebody is not a great writer, I’m gonna be really picky, and I’m probably gonna shoot down nine out of every ten pitches–or maybe ten out of every ten pitches. And there is no other way I can do my job that I know of.

Steven:   Do you have any favorite rock magazines that you read today?

Chuck:   No…

Steven:   What are you reading, music journalism-wise?

Chuck:   I mean, I barely have time to read the Times, you know, in the morning. Honestly–and this is gonna sound really haughty–I probably read more music criticism in the Times than anywhere else except the Voice these days. Since I live in New York and since I get it delivered. And honestly, I didn’t even get a subscription to the Times until after September 11! But, look, I have a pile of books that I’m more interested in. I’ll tell you my stack of books that I want to read, that I’m more interested in than keeping up with music magazines, although I’m really easily diverted, like when my daughter Coco brought home Terrorizer, I knew that I should be reading the Times, but [laughs] I was drawn to reading all these gothic metal reviews. But okay, I have: this book called The Testosterone Advantage Plan, which I got through Men’s Health, which I subscribe to (I had to subscribe to something since my daughter was selling subscriptions for school!); I’ve got a book called Sports Talk by a guy named Alan Eisenstock, The Good Cook’s Book of Mustard by Michele Anna Jordan, Miles to Go, which is a Miles Davis biography by Chris Murphy–a lot of these I just bring home from work; Whose Detroit?, which is a history of Detroit, the Labor movement and stuff, by Heather Ann Thompson…is this really boring?

Steven:   No, it’s interesting.

Chuck:   Umm, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe by J. Richard Gott…I won’t tell you the authors anymore. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media in the Post-war Suburbs, a novel called All Families are Psychotics by Douglas Copland, A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow, which is a novel, it could be bad, I don’t know, about hitch-hiking. Another novel, which is supposed to be the distaff version of High Fidelity, it’s called To Be Someone. And my girlfriend just gave me for Valentine’s Day, Ramiro Burr’s Billboard’s Guide to Tejano and Regional Mexican Music. So, it’s just like–when would I havetime? I guess I’ll read Rolling Stone and Spin because I get them in the mail–actually, my subscription ran out and I really need to get it back going. I really prefer readingBillboard.

Steven:   Really?

Chuck:   Yeah, I find it kind of interesting, plus it’s stuff I don’t really know about, you know, like the music industry, and I feel like I have to get more industry reporting in theVoice, by the way, it just seems like there’s a lot going on lately. I would rather read Billboard than Rolling Stone or Spin or almost any music magazine, which doesn’t mean the writing is better, it’s just that it’s kind of telling me stuff I don’t already know, whereas Spin and Rolling Stone really aren’t gonna tell me stuff I don’t already know. But when I do get a copy of those, or Entertainment Weekly, I’ll look and see what the lead review is, and I’ll glance through to see what they review because it has someinfluence on me. I’ll be like, “Oh! They gave the Joey Ramone album a lead review, they gave the Casey Chambers album a lead review. That never occurred to me that people would think of that as important.” Those are two examples.

Steven:   Plus you’ve got guys like Pareles and Christgau who do the occasional record review for Rolling Stone.

Chuck:   I don’t really read their stuff in Rolling Stone. I mean, I’ll read Sheffield in Rolling Stone. And actually, the two writers, Sheffield, and now, Kelefa Sanneh–who I think is great. He’s about 25, he went to Harvard, he did some hip-hop stuff for me. I think the last things he probably did were Dungeon Family and Outkast‘s greatest hits, he did Wu-Tang and Jay-Z. He’s done a few pieces for me. But he was hired by the Times when Ann Powers left a couple months ago–those two, just because I really wish they had more time to write for me, I’ll read their stuff. I mean, Sheffield’s column in Rolling Stone, I assume it’s still going on…

Steven:   ”PopEye”? I think so…

Chuck:   If I’m waiting in an airport, I’ll be like, oh look, Christgau reviewed these Arabic records in Rolling Stone, and I’ll look at it, but usually it’s stuff I heard him talk about for the last four months anyway! Like, I thought it was cool that he did the Arabic roundup in Rolling Stone, but a lot of that stuff had kinda been in the “Consumer Guide” already, so, you know…

Steven:   Do you have the time to, or do you want to write a third book? Any plans for one?

Chuck:   Do I want to, in theory? Yeah. Do I have the time? Right now, no. Do I know what it would be? No. Would I love having a third book on the shelves? Yes. Do I have the energy or the income to be able to write a third book? Probably not. Even as a freelance writer, I made less money the two years I wrote my books than in years I didn’t write my books, ’cause I had to stop writing otherwise. If someone gave me a really huge advance, where I could take a couple years sabbatical from the Voice, to write my memoirs or to write the Great American Novel…[laughs] I mean, if someone gave me a lot of money to write a version of Stairway to Hell about, say, electronica, I think that would be really fun. You know, I lived in Germany for three years, I’m from Detroit, I know the history of techno. I do, man! I could write reviews of the 500 greatest techno albums, and it’d be, honestly, you wanna know what? It’d be better–I could write a better techno book than anyone else. And if someone thinks that’s arrogant or full of shit, whatever. I could write a better guide to techno records than anybody else alive, I believe. BUT, I don’t know that I’ll ever do it, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be paid to do it. And I don’t know when I would find time. I mean, I’ve written exactly one actual long article in the three years at the Voice–5,000 words on Kid Rock and Eminem, because it was Detroit-oriented.

I did the singles column for a while, which I still plan to do again. In fact, I woke up this morning, I have this like pile of singles, and, okay, I gotta listen to these. I have notes on about 20 singles, it’s just a matter of sitting down at a typewriter and doing it. I’m at the office so much during the week, working on other people’s writing–I write these little show previews, like 10 or 12 of those a week, they’re in the middle of the paper–but it’s like, and I have my kids every other weekend, and I have a girlfriend, and it’s a matter of finding time to do it. Because I’m sitting at a keyboard–and these are all excuses, okay, I need to get these out in the air because the people want to know–but I’m sitting at a desk with a keyboard for hours and hours and hours every day, it’s really hard for me to come home and do it, or to sit down on a weekend and do it. I got in a pretty good groove of doing that singles column, which is easier than writing long pieces ’cause I can kind of do it piecemeal, but then the Village Voice radio station started, and I became the Music Director, and started doing a regular show–that ended up taking a lot of time. September 11 happened, and I started putting together a benefit album that comes out in April, which I get a Producer credit for, and that took up a lot of time. I can put in a plug for it: it’s called Love Songs to New York. That’s why I’m doing this interview! Basically, we put ads in all the Voice-related papers and got thousands of entries from unknowns and stars and stuff, and I went through all of them–Douglas Wolk actually did a piece on the entries as a lead review a few weeks ago. My point is, between that and the radio station, I kind of got out of my groove doing the singles column, because in the time I would’ve worked on the singles column I wound up working on those two projects.

Steven:   You miss the writing, huh?

Chuck:   I absolutely miss writing, but apparently, I don’t miss it enough to be doing it. Which is–I’m kind of mad at myself, but I just haven’t been motivated. I mean, part of what motivated me as a freelance writer was that I had to do it for a salary. And obviously, if I write any articles on top of my editing I get paid for them, so I should be motivated the same way, but it’s a matter of finding time to do it. And I miss it, I miss doing it, I miss seeing my name in print, I miss my opinions being out there, but I’m a fuckup, what can I say?

Steven:   What was your take on the year 2000, the so-called “year of the rock critic”? You had rockcritics.com, you had the Bangs biography, you had the movie High Fidelity…

Chuck:   It really seemed like a self-aggrandizing thing, and I don’t give a shit about it. I mean, you know, whatever. But Almost Famous came out…

Steven:   Yeah, Lester Bangs on the silver screen…

Chuck:   And Meltzer’s book…I don’t know, it seems like almost coincidental that all those things happened at the same time, and I don’t know. I mean, I have nothing against any of those things. There are things I dislike about Almost Famous or things I dislike about DeRogatis’s book, there are things I dislike about Meltzer’s book or Tosches’ book, there are things I dislike about rockcritics.com, there are things I love about all of them, you know, but do I think they add up to anything? Not really.

Steven:   Just coincidence?

Chuck:   I mean, maybe if you’re a rock critic who cares about it being the year of the rock critic, but for anyone else, I don’t know. I guess it makes maybe the “profession” more visible to other people if there’s a character in a movie, and I think there’s another one coming out where the main character’s a rock critic. I forget what it is…maybe I’m wrong. And High Fidelity came out, which has the second or third best scene about ordering records on your shelf, or the best scene about that since Diner, or whatever. And of course I could go off on a spiel, but it didn’t really affect my life. Unless you’re a rock critic who really wants to pat yourself on the back or you care about it being a respected profession–although what’s kind of good about it is that it wasn’t a respected profession, or not what was good about it, but maybe one thing that was good about it. I don’t have a take on it. I guess I’m not even convinced it happened.

Steven:   Gotcha!

Chuck:   No more than I’m convinced that 1991 was the “year that punk broke.” Rock critics, probably like a lot of other writers, want to create some stupid headline for what the year was–that’s their business–but for me it just seems like an over-simplification, and why someone would want to be drawn into doing that, I don’t understand.

Steven:   Any advice you’d give youngsters who want to become professional rock critics?

Chuck:   Umm, I don’t know. Don’t. The thing is, there’s more competition now than there ever has been. We sent out 1,100 “Pazz & Jop” ballots in December, I think we had 622 people vote, and there’s more people writing about music now than there ever has been. I’m really kind of out of touch with how much people get paid for Web sites and dot coms and whatever you call ‘em, but I’m under the impression–and this is a really obvious thing–that a lot of those went bust and people who were making money on them two years ago aren’t now. Freelancing in general, with a lot of magazines in general going under, this is not a really good time to be a freelancer…

Steven:   Some people don’t even get paid!

Chuck:   I’m a little bit out of touch with that, but that’s certainly something I pick up both from writers and from what I read. But I don’t know, there’s more competition than ever, but if you love it and you’re good at it, by all means, try, I guess.

Steven:   Just don’t send your pitches to me!

Chuck:   Don’t send your pitches to me if you suck! If you’re great, send your pitches to me, send me clips. You know, people have always asked me, how do I go about becoming a rock critic? And I’m the last fucking person to ask, ’cause with me it was a complete accident, it honestly was. I mean, go to journalism school on an Army scholarship, join the Army, write an 11-page letter to the Music Editor of the Village Voice–who happens to be me now!–figure out what music no one else is writing about–preferably by people with really stupid haircuts…I don’t know! It was all an accident. I mean, there were a series of accidents, but I don’t know how you do it. Oddly enough, as someone who wound up with this job, which I think is probably a pretty envied job among rock critics, and I’m really glad I have it, and I love it, I really do love it, though it can sometimes be a pain in different ways–I was never particularly ambitious. It was never like, boy, someday I’m gonna be the Editor of the Village Voice, or even, someday I’m gonna be published in the Voice or Rolling Stone. I never said any of those things. If anything, I was really un-ambitious. And I fell through the right rabbit holes or something.

Steven:   Chuck, I hope you’re not gonna pull an Alan Light on us; I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about.

Chuck:   No.

Steven:   Scott and I did this big long Q&A about what it’s like to be the Editor of Spin, and we put the interview up, and a week later: “I’ve stepped down from Spinmagazine.” He didn’t say a word!

Chuck:   I thought you were gonna say he told you to pull the interview offline!

Steven:   No, he just goes on and on about Spin, and how wonderful…

Chuck:   Now you’re making me worried that I’m jinxed or something.

Steven:   No, no, no, he’s the only person, but what was aggravating was that he didn’t tell us in any way, shape, or form that, hey, I’m about to leave Spin…

Chuck:   I’m the exact opposite, I honestly can’t imagine what else I would do, you know? And if you asked me what I’m gonna be doing in five or ten years from now, it’s just like, I mean, if I went back to freelance writing I wouldn’t–I don’t know how I could do it. It’d be like taking, you know, a salary cut of tens of thousands of dollars. And I would rather be at the Voice than at any of the other alternative weeklies, or any of the music magazines–I get more autonomy here. It’s like a really dream gig. And maybe it’s just for lack of imagination, but I can’t figure out what else I would do. Now, other people have used it as a stepping stone to move to other places–to the New York Times or to Rolling Stone or whatever–or to bigger freelancing gigs–or to move upstairs within the Voice itself–but I don’t…maybe it’s even a psychological flaw, maybe it’s like one of many reasons I should be in therapy, but I don’t have those ambitions, you know? And it’s really hard for me–in any situation I’ve ever been in my life–to imagine myself in other situations. [laughs]

No–I have no plans to leave the Voice, cross my fingers.

Steven:   We have this three-way phone conversation thing coming out with Jim DeRogatis–in addition to a regular interview. He critiques the site.

Chuck:   Did he say you guys lack integrity? [Laughs]

Steven:   No. He’s looking for more reportage and opinion…

Chuck:   I agree with that. I think you should totally argue with me more!

Steven:   He also has a problem with a lot of the people we’ve interviewed–guys like Gary Graff and Anthony DeCurtis.

Chuck:   Well, my problem with it is why you guys are not interviewing Nick Catucci and Amy Phillips, who I think would make for really interesting interviews.

Steven:   Well, you’re probably right; Scott and I have talked a bit about this.

Chuck:   It’s like all these careerists. It’s like–my biggest problem with the Web site is it’s all interviews with U2 and Pink Floyd–I mean, who cares about U2 and Pink Floyd?

Steven:   That’s the thing–I do! That’s my influence, not Scott’s. We agree with some of the criticisms, and hopefully we’ll make some changes. Anyway, this is actually the last question I have on my list.

Chuck:   Aah, that was so fun. Okay. You didn’t ask me any pointed questions! [laughs]

Steven:   Well, that’s true, maybe we’ll do that after, but, this question, now don’t say, “Well, I don’t think I’m the new Robert Christgau or Lester Bangs,” but, just as apremise that if you were the new Christgau or Bangs, back when you were at the height of your freelance career, who, if anybody, is the new Chuck Eddy out there today?

Chuck:   I wouldn’t want to say…

Steven:   And I don’t mean somebody who’s copying you…

Chuck:   I know you knew I would say that I don’t think I ever was the new Christgau or Bangs, and as far as–whenever there’s writers who try to write like me, I find it reallyreally laughable. Look, I will tell you the young writers I really like, but I can’t just think about one. And oddly enough, I’ve been blessed to have a bunch of them as interns for me at the Voice. I mean, the three that come off the top of my…okay, well, Kelefa Sanneh, who’s at New York Times, is just fucking brilliant. He’s great, he was not an intern for me, and I think he can end up doing–whatever he wants to do he’ll end up doing. I think Nick Catucci’s really good, I think Christian Hoard is really good, Amy Phillips is really good. Those last three started out as interns for me at the Voice. Umm, Irin Carmon probably could–my guess is she probably won’t end up writing about music, it’ll just be like a side thing; I just found out she’s gonna be working at Newsweek this summer, she interviewed Elizabeth Wurtzel a few weeks ago, she’s in her freshman year at Harvard, she could be really good, but my guess is she won’t end up writing about music in the long run, although I’ll give her assignments when she wants them. But you know, I should look at who else voted in the Voice poll, but Nick and Christian and Amy are all really smart, really funny, really original writers, I think. Umm, hmm…supposedly Ally Kearney, her web stuff, is like really great, I haven’t seen that much of it. There could be people out there–Liz Armstrong could be really good, but she writes way better about herself than about music; I mean, she probably writes about herself as good as anybody, and oddly enough, a lot of girl rock critics–I mean, I wish guy rock critics…I mean, one of the reasons I was never the new Lester Bangs is I never wrote as good about myself as Lester did, and if there was a new Lester Bangs in the last 20 years, it probably was someone more like, umm–like, Sara Sherr and Amy Phillips and Lissa Townsend Rodgers all seem to write better about themselves than I ever did, and that’s one thing that Bangs could do. So maybe they were all the new Lester Bangs, you know?

Steven:   Yeah, I know you don’t see yourself that way.

Chuck:   Why was a woman not the new Lester Bangs? I don’t know. I could go into stuff like why are those female writers not taken as seriously…

Steven:   I guess what I was just asking is who’s coming from an original and crazy place, just their own thing.

Chuck:   Well, I’m a fan right now of Ramiro Burr, who’s 45 years old and writes about Mexican crossover music for just about every newspaper in lower Texas, he’s coming from his own place. You should look at his Top 10 in the “Pazz & Jop” poll, it’s like he has a bunch of Mexican albums that nobody ever heard of, and he also votes for Incubus, Creed, and Clint Black’s Greatest Hits! I mean, he’s coming from his own place. Maybe Nick and Christian and Amy, maybe they’re too tied up with what other rock critics like? I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing, they’re more in touch than if they were coming out of nowhere. I don’t know–those are the three people that come to mind, but I’m sure there’s other people that I’m not thinking of.

Steven:   What about people like, I don’t know, George Smith probably isn’t young, but George Smith or Erik Davis?

Chuck:   Erik Davis barely writes about music anymore. He wrote way more about music ten years ago. I don’t know. I mean, George is great for what he does, but I mean, I believe he’s in his mid 40s, and he…it’s also like–and this is nothing against George because I think what he does he does great…but it’s also possible to be too consciously out of touch with what everybody else does. I mean, George is good because he’s really funny, and he really does have a way with language that I’m kind of in awe of, but just because none of the records you like are what other rock critics like doesn’t make you good by definition.

Steven:   You used to be accused of that!

Chuck:   But I didn’t! See, that’s what’s bullshit, I never only liked what other rock critics didn’t like…

Steven:   I know, I’m just saying…

Chuck:   That’s how I was perceived, but by idiots! And also, with George, music-reviewing is just a sideline hobby to his primary career as a scientist who’s made a major name for himself by writing about computer virus myths and military technology and, especially in the wake of the anthrax scares last fall, chemical and biological warfare, but when it comes to music he mainly just writes about one thing, you know? And he writes great about that one thing, right? About a certain kind of guitar rock, but as far as somebody to be the “future” or whatever way you wanna put it, I would want them to be able to talk to me about bubblegum pop, techno, hip-hop, you know, emo, new no wave bands like Lightning Bolt from Providence and Brooklyn, you know? I mean, I would want them to be up on shit! I, I, I don’t know, this is the first time I’ve gotten a little pissed–the idea of you picking those two guys out just because…

Steven:   I’m just throwing names out there…

Chuck:   Their musical taste basically sounds like music did in 1975–that’s probably not as true of Erik–it’s just like, it seems a little odd. I mean, I love Mike Saunders’s stuff, too, but he’s not the future of anything.

Steven:   Well, the question wasn’t about the future of anything, it was just, who out there today is–not copying you or heavily influenced by you–but like you in the sense that you came out of left field and had your own thing.

Chuck:   Yeah…

Steven:   I have no idea who the future of rock criticism is, I don’t know…

Chuck:   There are probably other people I don’t even know. There are “Pazz & Jop” ballots that look intriguing to me that I haven’t even gone back and read, from, you know, underground hip-hop guys in San Francisco who write for the web or whatever, or some guy in Chicago who actually thinks that Tortoise is the beginning of everything else. Yeah, scoff at it, but the thing is, people scoffed at me. Wanna know what? It’s probably someone who’s taste I would scoff at, somebody whose tastes are sodiametrically opposed to mine. It’s probably somebody who thinks that alt-soul is this amazing thing, you know what I mean? It’s probably not somebody who really likes teen pop and metal. I mean, I hope that their ears would be open to it, but if there is a new Chuck Eddy, I hope it’s somebody who writes nothing like me and their tastes have nothing to do with mine.

Online Exchange with Greil Marcus (April 2002)

Rockcritics.com readers were invited to submit questions to music critic Greil Marcus, who sent his responses by e-mail.

[2013 note: this exchange is included in the Joe Bonomo-edited Conversations With Greil Marcus. More info here.] 

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> >From: Tonya
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 09:15:38

I have two questions;
A) Do you have any research (published or otherwise) or notable quotes regarding the Portland Or. hardcore/punk band Poison Idea or their singer Jerry A? This band never seems to get its due…it always just gets ‘mentioned’ in the same breath as The Wipers…and nobody wants to dig any deeper than to state the obvious about them.

B) With all the books/articles you’ve written on the subject of punk, why have these leviathans of the genre gone relatively unsung?

No idea. 

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> >From: Steven Rubio
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 09:18:43

Hey Greil. My question is pretty obvious, but maybe no one else asked it: what do you think of the canonization of rock critics that a site like rockcritics.com represents? Why does rock criticism lend itself to this kind of, for lack of a better word, idolatry? Film critics never got or get this particular kind of attention…someone like James Agee was famous, but not really for his criticism as much as his other work, and others from that era, say Manny Farber or Robert Warshow, weren’t quite the “stars” that writers such as yourself have become amongst a certain population. Even Pauline was more important as an inspiration to future critics and as a conscience to filmmakers than she was a key popular figure (although I guess Roger Ebert might be the one to give the lie to my argument). Cameron Crowe might have gotten it wrong in Almost Famous, but the fact that Lester Bangs is an important character in a popular, highly-regarded movie is telling, I think; I can’t recall anything similar featuring a film critic, or a book critic, or a cultural critic of any type.

Dear Steve,

I wasn’t aware rock critics were being canonized, but now that you mention it, be sure to address me properly the next time we run into each other–and by the way, what is the proper form of address to a saint? I don’t think it’s “St. So and So,” because you have to be dead to be a saint. “He who is sure to rise above me” might do, but it’s a mouthful. I think perhaps just backing off several feet before speaking might be ok.

But in fact I don’t see it, not remotely. Lester, when he was alive, was certainly a magnet for certain kinds of scenesters, and Lester played a role, he both loved and hated his scene-making as a Falstaff–as a clown, a fool, a crazy, a madman, and so on. Dead, he can be a hero, a mentor, a presence, a conscience–but it seems to me he appears in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous not because of his larger-than-life role in pop culture and his status as a wise man, but because he was personally important to Cameron. He made a difference in Cameron’s life. He appears in the movie, and for all I know played the same role in Cameron’s career, as Cameron’s ideal audience–someone who could tell the difference between truth and lie, on the artist’s own terms. There was a lot I didn’t like about that movie, but the portrayal of Lester (along with everyone singing “Tiny Dancer” on the plane, and Billy Crudup tossing out a line of “Peggy Sue” just as the plane seems about to crash) was just fine.

Who follows writers of any sort around? Or, rather, what writers get followed around? Writers who make an effort to cultivate a mystique, who combine imperiousness with noblesse oblige, who work to be stars, and whose publications promote them as stars–Rolling Stone with Hunter Thompson, Vanity Fair with Christopher Hitchens.

What you’re referring to isn’t part of my frame of reference. I imagine there are people out there who having nothing better to do, or nothing else they can imagine doing, than to wonder what this or that writer, music critic, film critic, novelist, TV news reader, is really like, how fabulous it would be to just hang out with the person, to bask in their presence, to be them. (Which brings up the question: what is “hanging out”? Is it different from “hanging around,” one of the most boring activities of all time?) Edmund Wilson once wrote than anyone who has spent a year working for a magazine knows there is no piece so good that its publication will not bring forth letters from people cancelling their subscriptions, and no piece so bad that it won’t bring forth letters from people claiming it has changed their life. I think it begins and ends there.

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> >From: Astral Weaks
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 10:10:51

What is your opinion of the lashing that Richard Meltzer gave you in his essay “Vinyl Reckoning”? I ask because it didn’t seem to irk Christgau that much and I wondered if you were as good a sport as he.

While the question is posed in classic “Have you stopped beating your wife?” terms–be a good sport or burn in hell–I’ve always thought there was no reason to respond to attacks, unless I’ve been accused of making a factual error I didn’t make. I figure that I’ve had my turn in print; now it’s someone else’s turn. I’ve always been embarrassed, just as a reader, by all those New York Review of Books or Village Voice exchanges where someone writes in complaining about something that’s been published (usually, “So and So must not have actually read my book, where I clearly state . . .”) and the author replies in words drooling with condescension (especially when the complaining writer turns out to have been right). Plus, in every case I’ve come across so far, I’ve written far more awful things about various people than anyone has written about me. With that in mind, my only response to Meltzer’s article has to do with his charge that I somehow seized, and refused to give up, the plum of writing an introduction to the Da Capo reissue of his Aesthetics of Rock, as against Meltzer’s preference for Billy Altman. I was asked by an editor at Da Capo to write an introduction to the book. I said I’d be honored but would only do it if Richard approved, and if Richard felt comfortable with what I ended up writing. I never communicated with Richard (or Billy Altman) about this, but was told by the editor that, first, Richard was happy with the idea of my writing an introduction to his book, and, later, that he was happy with what I wrote. Beyond that it’s simply a matter of two people seeing things differently. Richard evidently has a reason to discuss the matter in public; I don’t.

How do you feel about John Morthland’s upcoming new anthology of Lester Bangs work?

Along with Billy Altman, John Morthland is Lester’s literary executor, and the two of them exercise any rights to Lester’s work: licensing pieces for reprint, publishing unpublished material, and producing books. I never had any legal or financial position regarding Lester’s work, including the book I edited, and I don’t now: I took no fee, was paid no royalties, and had no approval over the publication of the book, beyond the original Knopf edition. I edited Psychotic Reactions because Lester and I had long talked of my editing a book of his work–editing it while he was still alive, that is.

In that sense, for John to be taking up the project himself is absolutely the right thing for him to be doing. John knew Lester far better than I did, and Lester relied on John far more than he relied on me. John’s book, I’m sure, will be very different from the one I edited, and like many others I can’t wait to see it.

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> >From: Clayton Grisso
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 12:00:23

I recently had the pleasure of seeing the Lipstick Traces theatrical production. I thought it was quite amazing. My question is this: How does it feel to have one of your works adapted for the stage? And also, what was your initial reaction after being asked by the Rude Mechanicals to let them adapt it? It seems some disbelief would be in order, since the very idea of a rock book on stage was kinda audacious.

I heard about the Rude Mechanicals’ idea of turning Lipstick Traces into a theatrical production through my agent. Her assistant, it turned out, had gone to college with Kirk Lynn, who was the company’s resident playwright; she vouched for him. Knowing nothing about theater, I had no idea what the group would be doing, but figured they did. I told them to go ahead and make of the book what they might; to use it for raw material; that I wanted no approval of anything, did not want to see drafts, hear about rehearsals, etc. I wanted to see what they came up with. I sent them a copy of the soundtrack album for the book that Rough Trade put out a couple of years after the book was first published, as I’ve always done whenever a new publisher took up the book; that was it. In Austin one weekend, I met Shawn Sides, the director; we got along. But we didn’t discuss the production.

A first version of the play was presented at the Fringe Festival in New York; my friend John Rockwell, to whom Lipstick Traces was dedicated, called me from backstage following the first performance. “It’s not good,” he said, “it’s great. It’s to die for.” That was more than encouraging, but I still couldn’t imagine what it was. My wife and I went to Austin later in the year to see the play at the end of its run there, in its full, complete version. I was astonished. I hope the book is not devoid of humor, but I couldn’t have imagined turning it into a comedy, even if I wrote the whole thing while listening over and over to Monty Python and Firesign Theater records, for nine years, until they were all grey and cracked. The simultaneity I’d aimed for in the book was present in a physical, factual way that had escaped me. The greatest revelation of all, though, was the Cabaret Voltaire sequence. I understood the Cabaret Voltaire in terms of its effects, just as physicists can deduce the presence of an otherwise undetectable particle by its gravitational pull on other particles, but I’d never understood directly what happened in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916 until I saw the Rude Mechanicals’ performances of what they imagined might have taken place there. I’ve since seen the play eight or nine times–every time that scene comes up, it’s happening for the first time. I can’t anticipate it; I can barely remember it, it’s so much an event, not a representation.

The New York performances last spring were different–the cast was different. It gave me a sense of the play as something that might have room for all sorts of people in it.

When I first saw the play, in Austin, I told Shawn that she’d staged the book I’d wanted to write. There was a spirit of play, of nihilism, of anything-can-happen, that I’d tried to get into the book; I only understood how much I’d failed when I saw how others succeeded.

What a writer wants from a review, I think, is for the reviewer to tell the writer, with a sense of empathy but also distance, something about one’s book one didn’t know–to read the book for the writer. In that sense, the Rude Mechanicals’ version of Lipstick Traces is the best review I’ve ever gotten.

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> >From: Graham Coleman
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 3:45 PM

You’ve written countless words about Gang of Four, Wire and the Mekons but I’ve yet to find a single reference in your mighty oeuvre to another seminal U.K. post-punk band–The Fall. Why the ominous silence on the greatest of them all?

They never did a thing for me. 

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> >From: Sterling Clover
> >Subject: Questions For Greil
> >Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 16:28:59

Ja Rule or Mystikal, and why?

Anything is better than Ja Rule.

What makes for bad “classic” blues?

If by classic blues you mean recordings from the ’20s and ’30s, it’s hard to think of anything that doesn’t have at least the smell of the unlikely on it, which is to say I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a bad classic blues. I know “classic blues” generically refers to urban women singers of the ’20s, but so much of that doesn’t sound like blues to me, which is my parochialism, not theirs.

Does socialized art production result in good art (WPA) or bad art (Canadian Rock)?

The fruit of socialized art production depends on who’s doing it and why. So much of the art produced under the aegis of the WPA–including theater as well as murals in public buildings, or the photographic projects of the FSA–was done by people animated by their sense of a world to be changed by exposing its existence to people unaware of it. It was a chance for artists to make a living, and make a difference. Merely subsidized art, as through the NEA, is a completely different story. It’s about artists who believe the government has a responsibility to support their work, because it has intrinsic value, and the impulse of government to censor and protect itself from censure. It’s naive to think this won’t result in conflict. People who act outraged when it does–Karen Finley, who once wrote that the First Amendment had ceased to exist when “her” grant was rescinded–aren’t to be trusted. People who trust government agencies to support free and autonomous art are fools.

Punk or Post-Punk, and why?

“Punk or post-punk, and–” What?

More important: social backdrop or individual genius?

Nature or nurture?” Maybe the question can be answered by saying that genius is a word that probably should never be used in any discussion of pop culture. People who are not the same do their work, pursue their demons or angels, on a field of action that tends to make people appear more like each other than they actually are, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.

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> >From: InMyEyes
> >Subject: question for greil
> >Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:19 PM

One of the things I like about your criticism is how you approach each song as if it were a mystery you’re trying to investigate. Unlike most rock critics, you avoid journalistic completism and stylistic range–particularly in your “Real Life Rock” column–in favor of picking and choosing specific songs or albums that baffle and excite you. This reminds me of the way certain literary critics will meditate upon a few stanzas of a poem to draw everything out of it that they can. My question is, do you have a background in poetic interpretation, and if so, how has that influenced the way you write about rock? And what, in your opinion, are the chief differences between poetry and rock lyricism?

You’re right about my approach, which is a matter of affinities–what I’m drawn to–and learning to follow affinities where they lead–in other words, to trust your affinities. I have no background in poetics. The difference between poetry and “rock lyricism”–if by that you mean song lyrics–is obvious and complete: except for people who think theyare poets, like Paul Simon, lyrics are meant to be sung, come to life when they are performed, take their weight and muscle and ability to move from music, and true songwriters understand this. They understand that the most intricate allusive subtleties will be lost in performance, superseded by another quality altogether, and that the most impenetrable banalities can reveal infinite possibilities of thought and emotion when sung. In this sense I think the best songwriters are less afraid of words than poets can afford to be.

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> >From: Bromley, Charles
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 10:15:29

You’re a critic whose tastes range from country to rock to folk to blues. From Rabbit Brown to Daft Punk. From the twenties to whatever-the-hell the name of this decade is. Yet you’ve never written much about jazz. How come?

Jazz is a foreign language to me, and while I can read French and pick my way through a German-language newspaper–at least in Germany–I’ve never been any good at speaking either. I can make my way through some jazz–Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool sessions, say–but I don’t think I’m hearing what’s there.

On the face of it, the “images of America” in Mystery Train and Invisible Republic are very different from the European, dadaist, art-centric ideas in Lipstick Traces. But a pervasive idea in all your writing on punk is the ability it gives people with limited musical technique and even a limited access to the normal forms of discourse to “find a voice” and make a mark on society. I think the real theme of all your writing is democracy. Care to comment?

As  far as a guiding–or, really, governing or impelling–theme being democracy, as a matter of finding a voice and making a mark, you’ve said it as well as I could.

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> >From: justyn dillingham
> >Subject: A question for Greil
> >Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 12:49 AM

I was really happy to see you mention the Manic Street Preachers recently in your Salon column. They’re my favorite band, and I rarely see them mentioned in any U.S. publication. I was wondering, what do you think of their earlier records, esp. the Richey Edwards-era material?

This was the first Manic Street Preachers album to reach me. Obviously it’s time for me to go back and start from the beginning, as if I’d never heard them. I’ve been going through something similar with David Thomas and Pere Ubu over the last seven years or so, after letting most of their music from Dub Housing on go right past me.

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> >From: Phil Dellio
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 2:08 PM

Early in your “Real Life” column’s run, in the mid-’80s, you wrote about Top 40 on a fairly regular basis–hits from Timex Social Club, Billy Ocean, Electric Light Orchestra, the Moody Blues, Eddie Money, Bryan Adams, and others, one or two per column for a while. Sometime in the early ’90s, you seemed to stop writing about popular hits altogether. Was this prompted by a deterioration in the quality of hit radio (I don’t think many people would point to ’86-’88 as a noteworthy high point in the history of Top 40), by Nirvana’s impact, or did you lose interest for other reasons? (Or have you lost interest?)

The last Top 40 hit (not that there has really been a Top 40 for years) that got me–still gets me–is the Corrs’ “Breathless.” I’ve always heard that music on the radio; where I live you don’t hear much of that radio, mostly oldies and MOR album cuts. Pink’s “Don’t Let Me Get Me” is a big exception; coming up.

Do you have any thoughts on the way pop music is used in Boogie Nights, Rushmore, or The Virgin Suicides? I think they’re as musically rich in their way as Mean Streets or GoodFellas.

The Virgin Suicides was such a strong movie the music seemed peripheral; music as such is part of the story, what’s playing didn’t seem that important. I never saw Rushmore. The use of music in Boogie Nights was expert, as is everything Paul Thomas Anderson does, and soulless, like everything he does. The music in GoodFellas seems there to plug the holes in the characters and the story, to distract you from the complete hollowness of the picture; the music in Mean Streets is part of the streets, the air, the clothes, the walk, the talk, but maybe not quite so completely as in Who’s That Knockin’ at My Door.

Just about anyone who writes about pop music lapses into unchecked ridicule, or glibness, or sarcasm, or meanness on occasion. I think you’re good on calling people who cross a line in that direction, be it Albert Goldman, or Public Enemy, or the Stockhausen quote after the bombings. No one’s going to put the Spin Doctors on a plane with the issues you were objecting to in those instances, but can you see where someone might feel you crossed a line yourself in your published comments a couple of years ago about that group’s singer’s medical problems? I know you hated the Spin Doctors, but what you wrote really threw me.

No. Anyone who could sing “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” the way Chris Barron did–”Things been a whole lot easier since the bitch is gone,” he said, like someone throwing dirt out the window–deserves what he gets. Especially not being able to sing it anymore, if in fact he can’t.

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> >Colin Freebury
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Thursday, March 14, 2002 11:19 P

What does Mr. Marcus think about this: “Obsolete rock critics like Bill Flanagan, James Miller and Greil Marcus are proof that geezer rock stars aren’t the only ones who’ve stayed too long at the party.”

I can’t speak for Bill Flanagan or my friend Jim Miller, whose 1999 book Flowers in the Dustbin, as I read it, was pretty much his farewell to writing about pop music and to rock & roll as such, but I write about those subjects because they interest me, and because to some degree what I write seems to interest at least some other people. No one has an obligation to bother with what I have to say. Name calling usually sounds like the frustration of people who seem to think more people should be listening to them.

Is Mr. Marcus really the publicist for the Kill Rock Stars and Mr. Lady labels whose artists are always featured in his column in Salon.com?

Of course I’m the publicist for Kill Rock Stars and Mr Lady. That Mr Lady in particular has for the last two years been releasing the most surprising and moving music in the country is mere coincidence.

Did Mr. Marcus really mean to say this: “Corin Tucker shuts her eyes–scrunches them shut–Carrie Brownstein starts moving her arms and legs, and instantly the noise they’re making seems abstracted from their mouths, fingers, bodies, instruments. It seems much too big, too much in motion: On stage three people are drawing a diagram of the big bang, every particle of the universe flying away from every other, but in the audience a diagram is the last thing it feels like.” How is a diagram of the big bang drawn?

I assume you’re asking if the sentence was a big typo, since otherwise, why would it have been published if I hadn’t written it, and why would I have written it if I hadn’t intended to do so? As for the diagram question, normally one would draw a diagram of the big bang with a hand, pencil, and paper. It’s not very complicated; looks like the sort of drawings of bombs going off that eight year olds make when they’re bored in class.

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> >From: Scott Woods
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Thursday, March 14, 2002 4:22

I know you’re a big fan of Daft Punk’s Discovery album from last year, and I was wondering if some of the more obvious reference points in the song “Digital Love”–the Supertramp piano break, the Frampton talk-box solo, the gauzy ambience of the whole thing, which strikes me as close in sound and feel to Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver”–hit you with: the thrill of recognition in an improved context? a new or vital sound all its own (in which “reference points” are meaningless)? something different altogether? I ask this because, for someone like myself who grew up in the mid ’70s listening to pop radio, I no doubt have more of a soft spot for the likes of Supertramp and Frampton than you do (my guess is that you hate that music); I can’t not hear these things in there. Does any of this register when you listen to “Digital Love”?

Regarding Daft Punk’s Discovery, I’ve loved them since I heard my first Daft Punk note. I like the name. But this album seemed like the most inside-out worship of ’80s dance music imaginable–or rather not imaginable, imaginable only by these guys, but recognizable for anyone. A bath of sound. Because of the distancing, the sense of representation, what they’ve done sounds bigger, fuller, more conscious than its source–which it likely won’t in a few years. What I really mean is that their version of this music was glamorous in a way that the original (“Rock Your Baby,” etc.) was stylish. That’s why a band can play “Rock Your Baby” for over an hour, as I witnessed a year ago, and Daft Punk probably couldn’t sustain what they do longer than they do it. But who cares? It glows.

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> >From: barbara flaska
> >Subject: Question for Greil Marcus
> >Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 08:54:09

To help explain the world as it was to future generations, what on earth inspired you to write your original review of The Masked Marauders?

It was late, I was tired, and I’d been sitting around talking with my friend Bruce Miroff about how stupid all the then-so-called supersession albums were. Right at that moment Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Stephen Stills had all deadended, but somehow people convinced themselves that if you put three threes together you’d get 47.

Today it’s called “Featuring”–in 1969 it was rounding up famous people to sell junk by name. There was a story about several then-iconic performers, refugees from this band or that, walking off stage after, you know, “jamming” together for hours on end, infinite versions of this or that song by somebody else, and someone saying to one of the guys, “Not such a great night, huh?” and the person responding, “No, but we got a couple of albums out of it.” So it was simple: if there were a real supersession, with John Lennon, and Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger, and whoever else they’d deign to let into the club, what would they play? And it came out just like that. All oldies (“Duke of Earl,” “Season of the Witch”) or current beyond-criticism classics (“Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “A Little Help from My Friends,” “Oh Happy Day”). A couple of originals which, when the joke was turning into a record, I had to write (“I Can’t Get No Nookie,” “Cow Pie”). I signed it T. M. Christian, after the prankster in Terry Southern’s novel “The Magic Christian”–”of course,” I thought, but nobody got it. I remember showing the piece to Jann Wenner in the Rolling Stone offices the next morning. “Great,” he said after reading it. “We should run lots of fake reviews.” If we’d only known.

The Rhino reissue has it right.

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> >From: Phil Dellio
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Saturday, March 16, 2002 2:17 PM

This may not be something you’re able to or necessarily want to answer, but I think you’ll understand the impulse behind it. Ever since Pauline Kael gave up her column in the early ’90s, I’m sure the same question followed a lot of people out of movie theatres for the next decade: “I wonder what Kael would have thought about that?” I was able to piece together her reactions to Pulp Fiction, American Beauty, and a number of other prominent films released between her retirement and recent death through various interviews, but I still wonder about others. Did she ever share any thoughts with you on any of the following: Reservoir Dogs, Coppola’s Dracula, Boogie Nights, Casino, The Virgin Suicides, Smoke, Fargo, Crumb, Boyz ‘N the Hood, Menace II Society, Big Night, Trees Lounge, Jackie Brown, The Straight Story?

I don’t recall discussing any of those movies with Pauline. We did talk about American Beauty, but I think I went on so long about how much I hated it she didn’t get a word in. I mean, I know what I think of the movies you mention, but–I’ve never known anything that people otherwise seemingly in sympathy disagree about more predictably than movies. That’s what movies are for–for people who think they understand each other to disagree about.

With the exception of a somewhat cryptic three-word “Real Life” entry on Midnite Vultures–”This is embarrassing” (I assume you meant that literally, but it was listed first, which is almost always reserved for something you like; maybe you meant embarrassingly good…)–I’ve never read anything by you concerning Beck. Does he at all interest you?

I had one conversation with Beck about folk music, backstage at a benefit show where the Pretenders had just played. Chrissie Hynde was walking to her trailer like a queen; Beck was sitting in the dirt. After that, I worked hard to listen to everything, sure I was missing something. I found a hint of that something in One Foot in the Grave, but not elsewhere–except on his “Mexico,” a fantastic rewrite of the folk song “Hills of Mexico,” where he’s working at McDonalds, it gets robbed, he gets blamed, he gets fired, he decides to finance a trip to Mexico by robbing his old McDonald’s, and ends up working for a McDonald’s in Mexico. It’s on the compilation Rare on Air: Live Performances, Vol. 1, Mammoth 1994.

> >From: Scott Woods
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Monday, March 18, 2002 1:07 AM

Your book jackets have only hinted at your career (or part-time profession) as a teacher–you’ve taught American Studies is all I know for sure. What and where have you taught? Is it something you’ve enjoyed doing? And did pop music ever enter into the curriculum?

I taught an American Studies honors seminar for sophomores at Berkeley in 1971-72. I was still a graduate student. I was thrilled at the chance–when I took the same course in 1964-65, I found my subject matter, I discovered what it meant to be a student, I learned how good teachers could be, reading and writing became more than either had ever been. My teachers were the late Michael Rogin, who died last fall, and Larzer Ziff. I was arrogant and self-important enough in 1971 to think I could follow their examples, and I was wrong. I was utterly unsuited to be a teacher. I had no patience, and a teacher without patience is not a teacher. It was a year of misery and failure. Oddly, lasting friendships came out of it–there are two people who were my students who remain close friends, and one, David Ensor, who I keep up with by watching his work as a foreign correspondent for ABC News–but I had had enough bad teachers not to want to become one. I had always expected to get a Ph.D. and become a professor, but that year taught me I had to do something else. There was no point spending my life doing something I wasn’t good at and didn’t like doing. That was the effective end of my university career.

The curriculum was extremely traditional: the Puritans, the American Renaissance writers, the founding fathers, Lincoln, Twain, Hemingway. I had already finished my first go-round at Rolling Stone, and was beginning to write for Creem; students asked me to introduce rock and roll into the class, but I said I thought college was for finding out about stuff one wouldn’t find out about otherwise. I still believe that.

I didn’t teach again until 2000, when I was invited to apply for a teaching fellowship in American Studies at Princeton. I taught the course first at Berkeley, in the spring, and in the fall at Princeton: “Prophecy and the American Voice.” That meant not prophecy in terms of predicting the future, but prophecy in the Old Testament sense, the prophet as one who delivers judgment on a society, and America itself as a society, or a nation, that, seeing itself blessed beyond all others, carries within itself the expectation that it will be judged more harshly than any other, even if it has to pass and carry out that judgment itself. Again the curriculum was traditional, beginning with John Winthrop, the original Puritan governor of Massachusetts, and his 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” and moving from there across three more texts on its level and following its example: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington speech, and Allen Ginsberg’s long poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” both as it was written in 1966 and as Ginsberg performed it, with an orchestra of downtown New York musicians, in 1994. There were novels: Lee Smith’s The Devil’s Dream (read along with Nick Tosches’ Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story), Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo. There were movies, watched in class (it was a 3 hour seminar, so we could see a movie and discuss it immediately after): The Manchurian Candidate and three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: the 1956 Don Siegel original, the 1978 Phil Kaufman remake, and Pleasantville, which to me is precisely the same story, except here the humans take over the pods. There was Taylor Branch’s Martin Luther King biography Parting the Waters, read in its entirety; an essay on Lincoln by Edmund Wilson; JFK’s Inaugural Address, and the most intense and unforgiving of all prophecies, The Book of Amos. There was music: the Revenant collection Raw Pre-War Gospel, Bob Dylan’s 1990s albums–Good As I Been to You, World Gone Wrong, and Time Out of Mind, along with the complete text of Saved! gospel speeches Dylan delivered from the stage from 1978-81–and a CD of Martin Luther King speeches (Revenant and CBS provided 20 copies of each of their titles for free, which allowed me to give the CDs to students at the beginning of the term so they could listen to them casually, over time, rather than studying them for a week).

The classes at Berkeley and Princeton were completely different. At Cal there were 16 students, and for the first half of the semester usually 3 or 4 would be absent. There were two women about 40, one 30, the rest about 20, only three men, one African American, one Hispanic American, one French person, and no Jews. At Princeton all 19 students were about 20. There was one African-American and one Chinese American, and no Jews, and more men. Until the very end no one was ever absent. At Berkeley people dove into the material with a sense that it was about them, that they were part of its drama. While the classes on Winthrop and “Invasion” #1 and Lincoln and gospel music fell flat at both Cal and Princeton, and the Roth and Ginsberg classes were fantastic at both places, otherwise there were no parallels. At Princeton, students who were direct and passionate outside of class were reticent and analytical in class. There was no sense of complicity with the material, no sense that it had anything to do with their lives. I remember one very sophisticated discussion of The Devil’s Dream and saying, after a break, that while I had learned a tremendous amount about the book from the discussion (which was true for most classes in both places), I couldn’t tell from anything anyone said if anyone had actually liked it. The students at Berkeley made noise in class. The Princeton students made noise in their papers, which were imaginative, funny, daring, ambitious, while papers at Cal were more narrowly framed and less intellectually alive.

I talked a lot to other teachers at Princeton about my feeling that the classes were airless. With one exception, every professor said, in effect, “That’s Princeton.” I heard again and again that it was the student culture: “Princeton students find out very quickly that it’s considered uncool to display passion about an intellectual subject in front of one’s peers.” But when the class was over, I went out drinking with a few of the students and raised the question again: “We find out very quickly,” they said, “that professors here aren’t interested in our responses or opinions. They want stuff analyzed, from a distance.”

My approach was to keep quiet. My ideal class, which didn’t happen, would have been one in which I didn’t say a word. I discovered that as a discussion developed, and it seemed to me absolutely essential that a certain point be raised or example be given, if I kept my mouth shut, within minutes that point would be made, that example, or a better one, would surface. Within a few weeks, I had one or two students begin each class discussion, according to his or her choice of an approach: a whole agenda, one provocative question, followed through, whatever people could come up with. This worked.

I also found, at Cal, that bringing someone whose work was being discussed into the class made a huge difference in terms of the students committing themselves to the class. I invited Phil Kaufman to come to class just after we’d finished watching his Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I assumed that at some point someone would ask him, “Why did you do this picture?” and he’d say something like, “Well, my first two movies had been commercial and critical flops, and I was offered this project, and it was a chance to keep directing and pay my mortgage, so I took it.” That turned out to be the first question asked, and his answer was, “It was 1978, the beginning of the New Age movement, and I was living in San Francisco, and everywhere I looked, all I saw were pods.” He began the discussion on a philosophical level and it stayed there. I never had another absence. At Princeton, students are not absent, but I still needed that kind of visit to power the class, and for one reason or another it didn’t work out (Phil Kaufman happened to be in New York the week we were seeing his movie, promoting Quills, but wasn’t able to take off a day and come to Princeton).

I could go on for thousands upon thousands of words more. I could talk about my culture shock over Princeton as such–the place, the town (or lack of it), the people, vs. Berkeley, which is where I went and where I live. I could discuss students individually, and the difference between grades at Cal and Princeton, and the effect of the election on the class, and much more, but this is enough for now. What it comes down to is this: I learned to keep my mouth shut, and I’ll be back at Princeton this fall, teaching an American Studies seminar called “Practical Criticism.”

One highlight: on the train back from Princeton to New York one evening, I saw a thin blond man get up from his seat in front of me just as we were pulling into Penn Station. It took me a split second to recognize him: David Ensor, from my American Studies class 29 years before. By the time I got up to follow him the aisle of the full car was jammed and I never caught up with him, to say, “You’ll never guess what I’m doing now . . .”

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned about your own writing from an editor you’ve worked with?

I can’t answer the question. I have had good relationships with editors, especially Lindsay Waters at Harvard University Press and Jon Riley, now at Faber & Faber, over very long periods of time. I’m not sure what I’ve learned from them. They are friends, and I trust their judgment. I have had extraordinarily good editing from countless people–Robert Christgau, Jim Miller, Kit Rachlis, M. Mark, David Frankel, Doug Simmons, Ingrid Sischy, and many more. I’m sure I could have learned a lot from them if I’d paid more attention. But what I mostly remember is again and again thinking, Thank God, he/she saved me from ruin! Again!

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> >From: Brian O’Neill
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:55 PM

Lipstick Traces came out at the last moment it was possible for nay-sayers to write off the Sex Pistols and punk in general as a fad due to the lack of commercial acceptance. Does the subsequent success of the movement the Pistols started add further validity to their legacy? Or on the other hand, doesn’t it now make comparing punk to any “counterculture” movements such as Dada kind of erroneous since punk is no longer counterculture at all?

Someone–maybe Malcolm McLaren, maybe Jamie Reid, maybe Johnny Rotten, maybe someone else–said “The Sex Pistols were a one-band movement.” Meaning that everyone and everything that circled around them, that was pulled into their black hole, that was inspired by their example, was something else–on another plane of seriousness, intensity, and we-don’t-care. I think this is right, and that while the commercial success of Nirvana says a lot about punk, it may not say anything about the Sex Pistols.

I’ve said this before, but I’m always amazed to find out, by happenstance, how true it is: whether or not punk is counterculture, or ever was–in a sense it was elsewhereculture, maybe–the Sex Pistols were on the other side of whatever line you might want to draw, and they have not been absorbed, recuperated, brought back into the fold, their disease made into a cure. They have not been able to absorb themselves, to bring what they did back into the fold of who they were before and who they are now. Not that I begrudge them a penny of all they can collect from every reunion tour from now to doomsday. But the reason Sex Pistols records are almost never played on the radio–not by mainstream FM stations focusing on the ’70s and ’80s, college stations, pirate stations, Pacifica stations–is that once a Sex Pistols record appears on the air, everything around it, anything played just before or after, sounds stupid and compromised. The idea that “Marilyn Manson [or whoever] makes the Sex Pistols sound like the Chipmunks” has always been a joke on whoever tells it–the demands in that music–”Anarchy in the UK,” “God Save the Queen,” “Pretty Vacant,” “Bodies,” “Holidays in the Sun,” “Belsen”–are irreducible, and no one has gotten to the bottom of them yet.

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> >From: Daniel Villalobos
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 12:38:18

What do you think about Almost Famous? I really hate that movie, but all my friends just loved it. All right, it’s just a movie, but for me it was also a sign. A sign of hard times. How do you point to the enemy, when the enemy is listening to your music? And putting it on his soundtrack?

Some of my problems with Almost Famous come from being at least tangentially part of its milieu. I had left Rolling Stone (1970) before Cameron Crowe became a presence there, and when I came back (1975) he wasn’t around. We’ve never met. But the picture of the place makes no sense–like so much of the film. It starts with the hero’s idiot mother, who by the end of the movie will become a fount of wisdom no one can resist, just because. The portraits of Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres, writer David Felton, and editor Jann Wenner are just as other-worldly: the idea that Ben was a dope who could be fooled by a kid’s earnestness, or that Jann would hold the cover of his magazine for an unwritten story on an unknown band by an untried writer is–by the time the movie is set–absurd (in the early days of the magazine anything went). The denouement of the movie–the young writer turning in a warts and all piece–is ridiculous. Cameron Crowe made his reputation by writing expert, convincing pieces that showed musicians as decent, interesting, conflicted, real people, to the point that soon enough many refused to be interviewed by Rolling Stone unless Crowe had the assignment, knowing how we’ll they’d come off in his hands. Cameron had a lot to do–I don’t mean intentionally–with turning Rolling Stone from an independent voice into a publicity machine (the economy in general had a lot more to do with it). And I didn’t like Kate Hudson.

I did like Billy Crudup–he’s perfect riffing on “Peggy Sue” when the plane seems about to crash. He’s always good, because on camera he projects modesty. I liked Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs. “He’s not much like the Lester we knew,” my wife said, and that’s true, but to a degree I played an older-brother role for Lester, which is the role he’s playing for the Cameron Crowe character in the movie. Whenever Hoffman was onscreen I felt real heart, Crowe trying to live up to his story and succeeding. Here, Lester Bangs seemed as unforced as everyone picking up “Tiny Dancer” in the plane.

I haven’t seen Say Anything, which people love, or more than a few scenes of Jerry McGuire on an airplane. I thought Couples was OK and Vanilla Sky an abomination, even as a recruiting ad for Scientology. Fast Times at Ridgemont High remains a miracle–funny, honest, imaginative, unbelievable cast, fine direction, not a false note, and many brave ones, especially because the book Crowe wrote, on which he based his wonderful screenplay (not that I know how much of his screenplay is actually on the screen), is so unconvincing.

When we saw the movie, in New York, in a theater now ruined by the terrorist attacks on the city, there were six people in the seats.

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> >From: Brent Sanders
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 10:54 PM

In Jim DeRogatis’s excellent biography of Lester Bangs, the valid point is made that Bangs’ legacy was ill-served by the editor’s choice of material. Said editor would be Mr. Marcus. The theory is that since Lester’s freewheeling, hooligan-in-print style was the polar opposite of the rather dry, scholarly style of pseudo-bohemian hucksters like Marcus, Christgau, etc., the idea of letting his work be anthologized by the like would leave it open to A) a complete misrepresentation of his work, and/or B) a subconscious desire to show Bangs’ work as mere buffoonery without illustrating or presenting the genuinely solid philosophy behind his writings. A solid point that Mr. Marcus should address.

The second question (well, Hell…they may not really be questions, so much as points for Mr. Marcus to expound deep upon…let’s appeal to the ego, here) was that while Marcus’ writing in articles I have read does seem to enhance and enlighten, his books seem just pompous, long-winded exercises in semantic gymnastics. I read an interview with him a few years ago, in which he was asked about his book on Dylan’s Basement Tapes. His answer went something like, ” Well, I wanted to write a book, so…”. Whoa, such inspiration. Pick a subject, showcase my intelligence, pick up an award, badda bing, badda boom. I mean, was he really inspired by this music, or just wanting to give his thesaurus a workout? As one of the few people who has actually seen Mr. Marcus perform (as part of the Critic’s Chorus with the Rock Bottom Remainders), I can honestly say he does indeed love the music he writes about; the sheer joy on his face was obvious. But his book-length writing seems to strip away all the transcendence and bog it down into mere dissertation. Even his much lauded, highly overrated Mystery Train is a lugubrious trail that doesn’t illuminate or inspire so much as it plods along in it’s quest to illustrate what we already know: this music can change your life, Sparky. And the high-handed tone is so blatant as to scream out it’s desire to teach us unwashed heathens a thing or two. Quite frankly, his book-length work seems damn anti-Rock and Roll. Do I just not get it?

Sorry–as I’ve said elsewhere in this conversation, it’s not up to me to convince people my writing is wonderful/essential/decent/tolerable if the writing itself doesn’t convince/interest/intrigue/provoke whoever might read it. The questioner already knows what he thinks.

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> >From: Tom Sawyer
> >Subject: Questions for Greil
> >Date: Thursday, March 21, 2002 10:17 PM

My questions are about the discography in Stranded (I’ve never come across the reprinted edition, so my apologies if you’ve touched on the first two of these):

1) Are there any entries on that list that you would drop today?
2) Is there anything from that time period (pre-1979) that you now wish you’d included?
3) Name 20 records–albums or singles–from the past 23 years that rank with those on your Stranded list.

The second edition of Stranded was published in 1996 by Da Capo; it is itself out of print now, as Da Capo recently dropped many of their music titles. There was a new introduction by Robert Christgau, a new preface I wrote about the tortured publishing history of the thing the first time around, and updated contributors’ bios.

I’ve rarely had as much fun writing as I did in the couple of weeks I took to write the original Stranded Discography. As soon as the book was published in 1979, I started marking up a copy with stuff I’d forgotten or stuff that had come out afterward–and almost immediately quit. With hip-hop, the continuing flood of punk singles and albums, the more obscure corners of Jamaican music–I never made the connection to African music–and then the true explosion of the revision of the history of popular music by means of CDs–the kind of discography I’d played with would have required a whole book, updated every few years at that.

In the margins of that 1979 edition there is, from 1979 or 1980, the Beat, “Twist and Crawl” and “Stand Down Margaret,” the Brains’ “Money Changes Everything” (of course I’d add Cyndi Lauper’s version, along with “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”), London Calling by the Clash, Sam Cooke’s One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, Essential Logic’s Wake Up, Broken English by Marianne Faithfull, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, Entertainment! by the Gang of Four, Jefferson Airplane’s 1966 already included “Runnin’ Round This World” crossed out, Shorty Long’s missed 1964 “Devil With a Blue Dress On,” the Mekons’ “Never Been in a Riot” (now I’d add Fear and Whiskey, The Edge of the World, The Mekons Story, and The Curse of the Mekons at the very least), the Melodians’ profound Pre-meditation, a 1979 collection of releases from 1965-72, the Raindrops’ missed 1964 “Let’s go Together,” the Prince Buster Judge Dread series, Sam & Dave’s missed “Hold On I’m Comin’” (dropped and not caught originally, not omitted).

What I’d really missed: most of the Velvet Underground, which didn’t come across for me, perhaps because of West Coast snobbery, until punk had opened it up for me. Most of Pere Ubu before Stranded came out and certainly afterward, until the 1990s, when to me the band made its best music, still continuing through Raygun Suitcase, Story of My Life, Pennsylvania and last year’s Surf’s Up, plus David Thomas’s live Meadville. Much Southern soul that barely got out of the south in the late ’60s or early ’70s (now collected on Down and Out: The Sad Soul of the Deep South). Also much early commercial folk: I’d add the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” and Peter Paul & Mary’s “Don’t Think Twice” and “Too Much of Nothing”–I was much too cool to mention them the first time around.

What I’d add, now, just off the top of my head, ignoring the hundreds or thousands of discs that CD reissue projects would mandate: Grandmaster Flash, “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” and “The Message,” the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks On Me,” Alphaville’s “Big in Japan” and “Forever Young,” Foreigner’s “Urgent” and the transcendent “I Want to Know What Love Is,” most of the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac’s early music, Heaven’s to Betsy’s singles, Sleater-Kinney’s Call the Doctor and All Hands on the Bad One, Nirvana’s Bleach, Nevermind, and Unplugged in New York, Bob Dylan’s Unplugged and Time Out of Mind, Billy Ocean’s “Slow Train Coming,” “Tenderness” by General Public,” Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Elvis Costello’s King of America plus the singles “Let Them All Talk,” “Everyday I Write the Book” and “All This Useless Beauty,” the Slits’ 1977 demos collected on the 1980 Once Upon a Time in a Living Room, the soundtrack album to my book Lipstick Traces, Counting Crows’ “Mr. Jones,” Eleventh Dream Day’s Lived to Tell, Madonna’s “Live to Tell,” “Holiday” and especially “Like a Prayer,” Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love, everything by the Handsome Family, Lou Reed’s Ecstasy (among many great solo albums), Big Sandy’s L.A. doo wop tribute Dedicated to You, Come’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, Van Morrison’s The Healing Game, Daft Punk’s Homework, Hooverphonic’s A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular (now I’m looking through old notes), the box of Costello & Nieve 1998 live shows–see what I mean? I could keep this going all day and not come close.

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> >From: Tom Sawyer
> >Subject: more questions for Greil
> >Date: Saturday, March 23, 2002 11:00 AM

I’m interested in your thoughts/impressions on any or all of the following:

Eminem: The best New Dylan in years, because he’s also the New Prince–in love with words, and he swings, he knows a beat from a bleat, he can keep up with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog, he’s as funny as Pete Townshend. Scary, because he gets down under anyone’s skin, can make anyone uncomfortable, including, quite obviously, himself. Not a clue where he might go, what he might do.

Ryan Adams: Zero.

Lucinda Williams: As great an emotional fraud as Destiny’s Child–wins the prize over them as the most mannered singer in pop music because she’s been fooling people with it longer. A monster of self-praise, of the poor-mouth, to her own self be true, but I love one of her comments in the current Esquire: “Some of my best friends are music critics.” What a shock.

The White Stripes: I’d have more to say if I could find their earlier records. Their sister/brother wife/husband mystique is about as interesting as the debate over how Jeff Kent broke his wrist, though.

Jay-Z: Talent.

Alanis Morissette: Does not know a beat from a bleat. I still think “You Oughta Know” is the whiniest record ever made. She’s better in movies.

Aimee Mann:  Up there with Lucinda Williams, but a much more obnoxious whiner than Alanis Morissette–I mean, there’s a difference between making a horrible hit record based on an irritating emotion and basing your whole life on it. The sense of entitlement, of condescension, comes off of her in waves. Given that a whole movie was based on her wisdom, though–who can forget every character, dead or alive, mouthing along to, “Wise Up,” I think, in Magnolia? And then, lo and behold, everybody did wise up. Gosh.

Gorillaz: Nothing to say.

O Brother, Where Art Thou:  It’s not Fargo, but I liked the movie. I’m a sucker for George Clooney. His miming of Dan Tyminski’s “Man of Constant Sorrow” was fabulous, as was the singing and arrangement. The pure-Coens’ notion of having an a cappella “Oh Death” come out of the mouth of the Grand Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan, offering a philosophy lesson to the blues singer who’s about to be lynched, was astonishing. The album is not as good–Gillian Welch, the Whites and the Cox Family are very dull, and after a while you realize the best thing there is the 1927 Harry McClintock version of “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” which should have been on Anthology of American Folk Music. Still, it’s no surprise the album reached so many people so strongly–if you don’t know this music, it’s like doors in a mountain opening, and you can’t help but want to go inside. It’s an old-timey version of The Harder They Come soundtrack, and there’s as much to discover in a more-where-this-came-from sense as there was there.

Peer-to-peer file sharing (Napster, Morpheus, Gnutella, etc.): Haven’t done it.

Michael Jackson’s Invincible: He lives. As in They Live. Doesn’t anyone remember that he’s a child molester?

The Beatles Anthology project (discs and/or videos): The good stuff is on their albums.

Bob Dylan seems to have held your regard as a critic longer than anybody in rock & roll, so I’m wondering how you’d respond to the following debating proposition: Dylan is the towering figure of the rock & roll era. And, if so, why is it that the public, by and large, doesn’t get it? (It seems to me that the inverse ratio of critical esteem to public acceptance–i.e., sales–is unmatched in the music, and he’s forever the butt of easy jokes.) And one other thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen any criticism that comments on the huge changes in the quality of Dylan’s voice over the years. Unlike almost any of his contemporaries, his voice has changed so much from his earliest recordings that, set side to side, you’d never recognize him as the same guy. Yet critics never really acknowledge this. Any thoughts?

I don’t think he’s the towering figure of the rock & roll era. For one moment, from roughly the time Highway 61 Revisited was released in the fall of 1965 to the end of his tour in the UK in May 1966 he truly did tower over everything around him–everything, not just other musicians, but other artists, other politicians, other philosophers, other evangelists. He knew it, and you could hear the fact and the knowledge in his sound, and you can hear it now. But if anyone has to tower over an era, it was the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Dylan is a strange, dubious character. He has more to do with the Lone Ranger than John Wayne–”Who was that masked man?” He keeps his distance. He is from somewhere else. He not only speaks in riddles, he lives in them. For more than ten years, he has had more in common with a dead blues singer or old-time ballad singer than with any contemporary.

I think the reason the changes in his voice have not much been commented on–and I think this because your question made me realize how completely I’d ignored the question myself–is that, despite changes in tone, pitch, clarity, etc.–any formal description–the attack, the point of view, the way in which the voice enters a piece of music, what it does there, how it gets out, or how the music gets away, if it does–has not changed. That is: it remains unpredictable. It’s music as a game of three-card monte. This hasn’t always been true. It wasn’t true for Slow Train, Saved, Shot of Love, Infidels. But the way in which the singer works on “The Drifter’s Escape,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” and “High Water” defines Dylan as a singer, and defines his voice, in the greatest sense. As long as Dylan can draw breath, I imagine this will matter more than the actual sound he makes–because the twisting and turning that goes on in performances like these, the ability to bring a whole world into focus with the dramatization of a single syllable–the first “care” in “High Water” say–is the actual sound he makes.

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> >From: William Altreuter

> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Sunday, March 24, 2002 9:13 AM

Rock music seems very atomized at the moment, a category which contains a number of very specific sub-genres. Is it meaningful to talk about “rock music” as anything more than part of the trinity of blues based American popular music forms? Was it ever?

For Noisefest in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I was on a panel with other writers. One, Gina Arnold, author of Route 666 and Kiss This, also teaches swimming and diving to younger students. She had mentioned the panel she was going to be part of, and her students asked what it was about. “‘Is Rock Dead?’” she said (it wasn’t, but the theme was so vague I can’t even remember what it actually was). None of her students knew what “rock” was. That seemed to answer the question.

I stopped using the term “rock & roll” to apply to anything contemporary years ago, because it seemed to have been completely emptied of meaning. If anything, by 1993 or so the term seemed to refer only to a certain style of playing, i.e., rockabilly. In other words, “rock & roll” had been reduced to the same level of meaning, or un-meaning, as it had long had in the UK. In my frame of reference, though, “rock & roll” meant a way of being in the world, of talking about that manner of being, of separating yourself from all the assumptions that seemed to govern the world, of affirming that anything could be said at any time. It was a sound of surprise, both in terms of form, genre, style, but also of the individual voice, word, melody, note, riff, an interruption of the ordinary, the obvious, that could come at any time. It seemed to me that all of these things came together as a single standard of value, and it was that value that defined rock & roll, and made it different from any of its antecedents. It was not blues. It was not country, swing, mainstream pop, or anything else. The music itself, as an idea, an impulse, asked Carl Perkins, “What would it mean to have fun?” and Perkins, who had never asked himself that question, because the limits of his life as he had been raised to respect them proscribed the question, answered with “Blue Suede Shoes.” With the sound, the words, the will, the idea.

I think it was Robert Christgau who called “Blue Suede Shoes” a protest song. In 1992 I could still hear the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks with Me” as part of the same culture, deriving from the same sense of value. In the 1950s and 1960s it made sense to consider all popular music that derived from and sought to extend and deepen that value as “rock & roll”–doo wop no less than rockabilly, Chicago soul no less than Motown, later Philly soul no less than LA country rock or the San Francisco sound, the Rolling Stones and reggae speaking the same language. I recall a conversation with Richard Meltzer one night, it might have been about “The T.A.M.I. Show,” but he said, with great vehemence, as if a huge amount was at stake, something like, “The point is, it was ALL ROCK.” Rock & roll contained multitudes, could absorb and transform anything without it itself losing its value, its purpose.

This is clearly not true any more. When I stopped using the term “rock & roll” I used “pop music” instead–that is, I went with something that was not simply functionally meaningless, but which was obviously and aggressively meaningless. Now, at times, I can still hear that Public Enemy and Sleater-Kinney, Eminem and the Corrs, the Noonday Underground and Low all could and ought to travel under the same name. But it would be useless to write or speak as if they did, if one had any interest in getting something across to someone else.

Why is this? There are a lot of reasons. Ethnic/identity politics. The historical fact that “rock & roll,” which once signified music made by black musicians for black listeners–younger listeners who responded to the kind of stuff Alan Freed was playing in Cleveland in 1953 under the name “rock & roll” as if it was something new, not blues, jump-blues, swing, not like anything, too crude, too fast, too silly, for older listeners–had come, by the 1970s, to signify music almost exclusively made by white musicians for white listeners. The fact that with the appearance of reggae, punk, and hip-hop, not to mention music from Africa, Mexico, South America, and the Far East, the number of people vying for the attention of listeners expanded far more rapidly and to a much greater extent than the audience did, even though it was expanding too. Marketers, in order to somehow rationalize this situation, insisted on identifiable labels and pushed musicians to remain with genres. Listeners, in order to identify themselves to others and to themselves, did the same. Certainly there were times when “a rock & roll fan” could maintain an awareness of what was happening in “rock & roll,” even if rock & roll meant, as with “The T.A.M.I. Show,” Motown, James Brown, the Rolling Stones, the Liverpool groups, Jan & Dean, Lesley Gore, and more, more, more–”ALL ROCK.” Now it is impossible. Can anyone be completely on top of Northwest female rock & roll, New York hip hop, San Francisco turntablism, Chicago British country, and several hundred other not meaningless groupings, at the same time?

I long ago decided I couldn’t, and didn’t want to. I write about what reaches me, as someone who is simply present in culture. Whether that’s good enough is for others to judge.

- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -

> >From: Patrick McAvoy
> >Subject: Question for Greil
> >Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 7:33 PM

I know you have done a fair amount of research on Harry Smith and his life in the Berkeley area in the 1950s. I know he had connections with the San Francisco art scene. Did he know Pauline Kael at the time? I assume that they knew many of the same people, so I was curious if they were familiar with each other’s work. Thanks.

I walk past the apartment where Harry Smith lived in the 1940s every day. It’s at the foot of Panoramic Way in Berkeley, just above the football stadium, a basement apartment in a woodsy part of town. Certainly Pauline Kael and he knew each other. A few years ago, right when my fascination with Smith’s work was reaching the point of obsession–the point where, for me, real work starts–I was talking to Pauline, and I said, “You know, when I started looking into all this, I knew nothing about Harry Smith. I didn’t know if he was from Seattle or if he was from Mars.” “Oh, he was from Mars,” she said. She hadn’t hestitated a second.

Sorry Ma, Forgot to Bring in the Trash: Tom Carson Talks Straight

By Scott Woods and Steven Ward (April 2002)

Despite being “recruited at the last minute” as a replacement, and just 22 years old at the time, Tom Carson’s Rocket to Russia essay in Stranded is one of the three or four best essays in that much-lauded book, and among the best–certainly, the most vivid and loving–writing on the Ramones, period. (I love Carson’s description of Joey and co. as “zero-based rock ‘n roll,” and the paragraph he devotes to Leave Home–particularly to its key tracks, “I Remember You” and “Oh Oh I Love Her So”–is, to steal his own words, “very funny, but genuinely evocative.”)

Carson first made his mark as a critic freelancing for the Village Voice and Rolling Stone in the late ’70s. He still sometimes contributes to the Voice, though he more or less abandoned music writing in the mid ’80s–or rather, transferred his energy into politics, television, and movies.

In the year 2000, he won a National Magazine Award in the “Reviews & Criticism” category for his Esquire column, “The Screen” (specifically for columns on on Saving Private Ryan, ”The Simpsons,” and Being John Malkovich). [2013 note: none of which appear to be available online.]

Carson answered some e-mail questions from his home in Northern Virginia, completely oblivious to the funny smell emanating from up the street.

rockcritics.com:   How and why did you make the transition from music critic to TV/movie critic?

Tom Carson:   One simple answer is that most music critics are pretty committed to music as a subject, and I’m a dilettante. If someone doesn’t like my work, that would be the obvious put-down for the whole wad. I don’t mind calling myself one because I think it’s the right descriptive term. Anytime one of my interests starts to dominate the picture, I usually get lucky enough to write about it–music from ’77 through the early ’80s, which was a great time to be a rock critic if you were on the punk bandwagon, then TV just around when people stopped thinking it was smart to call TV a vast wasteland. I also got to write a lot about politics a lot in the Nineties. Given my bent or lack of one, my biggest break has been not being ghettoized by a specialty.

In practical terms, though, what happened was that James Wolcott had bagged his Village Voice TV column to go work for Tina Brown. M. Mark, who was the arts editor then, asked me and Tom Smucker to take over his page on alternating weeks. Smucker was better than I was, but I’m the one they kept. I think that ended up souring him on writing about television, not to mention for the Voice, and too bad on both counts. It’s one thing to more or less consciously argue with the conventional wisdom, which is what I do a lot of the time, and much rarer to be genuinely, truly indifferent to it. I mean, you don’t know what you missed. But he went, I stayed, and presto: that became my main gig.

rockcritics:   One of the clichés or truisms (take your pick) about music critics is that they are forced to confront the Big Question at some point in their thirties: Why am I doing this? Did you face this yourself, and did it have anything to do with your change of direction?

Carson:   You know, I’m starting to understand why, when I look at somebody else’s interviews on your site, I sometimes think, ‘What is this? So-and-so sounds so self-important, and that’s not like him.’ It’s simple. It’s because we’re not famous and nobody ever asks us this stuff. If it weren’t for you guys, to find somebody to listen to our thoughts on our careers, we’d have to own a parakeet.

Anyway, for rock critics my age and up, yeah, I think that is or was a big question to face, because about 15 years ago the whole ballgame changed. The stuff that had made rock and roll seem consequential enough to devote your life to it just obviously didn’t work that way anymore, and even though what replaced it is just as consequential, it involves all these different vocabularies and attitudes and guiding premises. I mean, I thought it was very funny, in a wishful sort of way, when critics started saying “transgressive” instead of “subversive.” It’s like new, improved Dr. Pepper. But it’s just ridiculous to treat upsetting the apple cart as a central value in music now, certainly if your basic orientation is toward white-guy guitar bands–which I think it was at the outset for pretty much all the crits in my age group. Kurt Cobain really was the end of the line and also sort of a fluke, and I think it didn’t make his life any easier that he was smart enough to know it and just be bedeviled by it. Ever since Madonna, unless you’re reviewing hip-hop, you’ve had to learn to take pop phenomenons seriously in a way critics didn’t back then. I dunno, should we really have thought long and hard about Olivia Newton-John? Probably.

In my case, though, the decision was sort of made for me, because my interest in writing about music started waning when it got unmistakably clear that the Great Punk Revolution, which I had been so obsessively pushing for in print, had gone kerflooey. To stay a rock critic and be at all useful at it, I would have had to start getting some real depth of knowledge about other genres. I was a good punk critic because its cultural context was something I understood and just thrived on, and its musical roots weren’t what you’d call unattainable. If you knew the Velvets, the Dolls, the Stooges, the Nuggets compilation and had a fondness for the early British Invasion stuff, all of which I did, then musically speaking you had about ninety percent of what punk came out of at your fingertips. Other than that, you just had to get off on the attitude, which I also did. But I think my parakeet just keeled over, so let’s move on.

rockcritics:   Do you think that television, particularly in the last decade or so, has ventured further–pushed its own boundaries more–than rock and roll? (i.e., with shows like The Simpsons, Sex In the City, Buffy, The Larry Sanders Show, The Sopranos, etc.)

Carson:   The obvious thing is that television had a lot more boundaries to push, and it’s kind of interesting that it was just around the time rock and roll started running low on new barriers to take a hammer to that TV started getting more adventurous. Especially from the corporations’ point of view, rock and roll has always been about trying to put the genie back in the box. TV has been a bunch of people looking at a box and saying, “Gee, do you suppose there’s a genie in there? Should we try to get her some food or something?”

Another difference is that the innovations on TV didn’t come from rule-breakers that the networks were trying to restrain, because they didn’t have to try–they could just restrain them. The partial exception to this was Steven Bochco, who I basically can’t stand but who in the Eighties really was the breakthrough in terms of network shows with a producer’s distinctive signature and a recognizable style. Even so, what really made TV expand and get interesting was the rise of new networks and cable, from Fox to HBO to the WB and so on, that had to sell themselves by saying they were different from the old broadcast networks. To some extent, they had to put their money where their mouth was, but different mattered more to them than good.

rockcritics:   Let’s go back to your formative years before you became a rock critic. What rock mags or rock critics influenced you or made you want to write about music in the first place?

Carson:   It’s embarrassing to admit how little rock criticism I had really read when I started doing it myself. I think I went through most of college not really knowing that there was a lot of difference between Creem and Circus. That was when Lester Bangs was editing Creem, too, so I clearly wasn’t paying much attention. I had read a lot more literary and movie critics, especially Pauline Kael, and started out imitating her and Greil Marcus, because I had just devoured Mystery Train in college. But I had to wean myself off that, and I also got less attracted to Marcus’s outlook as his work went on. Both because of being edited by Christgau and then devouringAny Old Way You Choose It, I ended up being much more permanently influenced by him, but it was on-the-job training.

rockcritics:   Is pop music still a central experience in your own life–or is that simply not possible given that your time is more focused on movies and TV? And do you ever hear new music and wish you could still delve into it in print?

Carson:    One way it stays central is as a way of looking at things–a set of attitudes, or maybe sympathies. I still have much more sense of professional fraternity around rock critics than I do around movie critics. We make the same kinds of jokes. On the other hand, I like the Movie Geek on Beat the Geeks better than the Music Geek, but that’s because the Movie Geek seems like a little bit more of a rock guy. Smarter, too. The TV Geek just disturbs me: “Yikes! I didn’t know Tom Shales had a son.”

I think I still have a sort of firehouse-dog response to music. You know, you hear the alarm go off, and you’re next to the truck with your tail wagging. If a song or performer catches my attention, there’s nothing I like better than getting into a big, insanely detailed discussion of what’s going on in that tune or that video or that career. I’m also pretty sure that I’m smarter about music than I was when I was a critic. I hear more, and I can make a better argument for why something that sounds negligible is a good song or why one that seems sort of plausible just reeks. But I haven’t made a consistent, determined effort to keep up, and that’s fatal. It’s not just that you have to hear the records. You have to know the context, either by living it as a fan or appreciating it as a critic, and now the context has just mushroomed. More and more, you can see even working critics giving up–just saying, “Screw it, I’m going to go on pretending that knowing something about Paul Simon is information worth sharing with you people, because I’ll go insane if I have to wake up every morning telling myself I care which one in N’Sync is Justin.” But I do like it whenever I get a chance to talk about music or rock performers from the vantage point of my current turf–in connection with TV or movies, or just as pop presences.

rockcritics:   In the time since you’ve stopped writing about music on a regular basis, who do you think has made the most consistently interesting music?

Carson:   Going all the way back to when I first fell off the trolley, one band I’m sorry I didn’t get to weigh in on is the Pet Shop Boys, even though I don’t know if I would have gotten them right back then. I’m probably lucky that there isn’t some huge piece of mine putting them down that would just look bone-stupid today. I did get to weigh in on Madonna, who ironically enough did more to turn my head around than the Sex Pistols ever had. Overnight, I became a pop devotee. She was sort of my last great passion, in the sense of being somebody you actively root for. And she stayed good for so much longer than anybody would have thought possible. She’s even still pretty good, but in pop terms she’s practically Marlene Dietrich by now.

More recently, one band I flipped for was Cornershop, because in a non-expert way I love Indian pop and hearing that groove all mixed up with Britishness made me realize just how much Salman Rushdie is a journalist. Even before O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which in my case was a treat but not a total revelation–I mean, I’d heard “O Death” in college, thanks to my friend Cindy Read–I also like a lot of the whole pre-rock roots Americana thing. That’s partly because, the older I get, the more I think the ‘Great Divide’ idea of rock and roll changing everything is a myth. Rock and roll changed the audience and mass communications changed the context, but the music was always just bonkers. That’s why I kind of like Gillian Welch, even though she’s humorless even when she thinks she’s being funny and, to the exact extent she presents her music as the real deal, full of shit. In some ways, the evolution of rock and roll is always somebody saying, “Yeah, but you know he”–or, more recently, she–”is a complete fraud.” Well, they usually are, but after a while it starts mattering less and we’re on to the next stage of the cycle.

rockcritics:   Your Bowie essay in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll is an almost unusually (and, in my view, well-earned) sympathetic overview of Bowie, at least a) given the year you wrote it (Bowie had yet to be canonized), and b) for an American critic (most of whom had mixed feelings–at best–about Bowie). Did you write this piece with any sense of critical opposition in mind? That is, in opposition to prevailing critical feelings about Bowie? Were you chosen to write this essay because of your sympathetic attitude toward him?

Carson:    I don’t know why they picked me, but I would guess that their sense was that Bowie didn’t much matter and therefore which writer they got didn’t much matter either. I was very much small fry at the time. I don’t mean to fault Jim Miller, but in any Rolling Stone publication great rock is always going to mean Sixties rock, and I don’t think that’s at war with his taste. One big exception is Christgau’s piece on Elton John, which said he was important a long time before Rolling Stone was ready to sign on. If you want to talk about someone who hadn’t been canonized yet, his piece is much more of a gauntlet thrown down than mine is. Also one of my favorites of anything he’s written.

I also don’t know which edition you’re talking about, because we all got to revise our pieces when they reprinted it ten years later–the only time I’ve ever gotten to do that. By the time I got my second crack at it, Bowie had been canonized, and as a result, I was more aloof. My opinion of his Seventies work hadn’t changed, but my opinion of the stakes involved had. There’s an undertow in the second version–sort of an “Oh, come on, don’t kid yourselves about how important this is.” Too much of one, because at the time I was feeling fed up with all the champions of how much rock and roll still, quote unquote, mattered. It was sort of like Bill Clinton calling that press conference in ’95 to announce that the Presidency was still relevant.

But I think what your question misses out on is that there was, at the time, a very distinct generational cusp. In the late Seventies, when I was in college, people my age called the boomers “they.” To us, boomers meant the Sixties people, and we were all enraged that we’d missed out on it. That’s a big part of punk, one that I don’t think gets talked about enough. It wasn’t father-son; it was big brother/little brother. Now we’re all going gray and getting fat together, and I think it’s really wonderful that, as far as history and the AARP are concerned, Paul Kantner and Richard Hell both belong to the same bunch of jackasses. But anyway, my point is that it was still the Sixties guys who were calling the shots in rock criticism, and they all hated Bowie, no question. But to people in my bracket, he was the man–or the coke-addled goldfish bent on world conquest with our support, anyhow. So I wasn’t reacting against those critics so much as I was expressing the consensus of my immediate contemporaries, without that much sense of going against the grain.

rockcritics:   You wrote some scathing commentary recently about Pauline Kael in your Esquire piece “McCabe and Mrs. Kael,” while acknowledging what a big early influence she was on you. Perhaps the sentence that best describes your contradictory feeling is “No way around it, folks; that evil old bat is the reason I do what I do.” Obviously, you must know a lot of people who both knew Kael personally and cherished her as a writer–did your piece strike any severe chords among your peers?

Carson:    I actually don’t know anybody who was close to Kael, except for one critic who was one of her many protégés. But I only see him once in a blue moon, and he’s not real big on venting. I know a couple of people who were at least acquainted with her at one point, and had ended up in the same position I was–disappointed admirers. Those first two books of hers were like the Bible to me when I stumbled across them, but once she got to the New Yorker, she started acting like a Mafioso. It’s just lunatic to act like a Mafioso when your button men are younger movie reviewers. I wonder what Andrew Sarris made of finding out that she was the Corleones and he was Bruno Tattaglia, when he just thought he liked movies.

I did write a piece saying some of that in Entertainment Weekly when she retired, and I heard at least some of the Paulettes were ticked off about it. Probably because I went after them for letting her turn them into a bunch of teacher’s pets, and EW wanted me to name names, so I did. You see, one reason her dying didn’t set off this big wave of reconsiderations was that everybody had already done their big Pauline piece when she left the New Yorker. I imagine she’d have liked that–treating retirement as the real death. She got to live out that fantasy of reading your own obituaries.

rockcritics:   Ken Tucker–who, interestingly enough, came to print roughly around the same time and in some of the same publications as you, and who abandoned music criticism for TV criticism–actually drew a comparison in Salon between you and Kael: “Nevertheless, Kael’s influence is everywhere and lasting…Her finest adepts are critics who have borrowed not her self-created slang and rhetoric–the so-called ‘Paulettes’–but who have developed a stubborn independence of opinion and an original manner of expressing it. Here I am thinking…of writers as disparate as Dave Hickey, Mim Udovitch and Tom Carson.” How do you feel about this comparison?

Carson:   Are you kidding? I was incredibly flattered, and I knew I didn’t deserve it. I mean, he’s obviously right about Hickey, who’s genuinely original and totally fearless, and Mim Udovitch is somebody who’s really created her own turf too. One thing she does that I wish I knew how to do is that even when she’s being provocative, she never sounds like she’s trying to start a fight. She just implies that you’ll get more fun out of life if you agree with her, and who wouldn’t want that? But I bet she was as pleasantly surprised as I was, because neither of us usually gets talked about that way.

One reason it was so gratifying was that giving up their intellectual freedom of movement to stay in Kael’s good graces was exactly why I was so disgusted by the Paulettes. Then again, it’s not like Pauline ever invited me into the treehouse, and I don’t know what I’d have done if she had. She liked to get them young and dazzled, at at one point I would certainly have qualified on both counts. Other than that, I thought it was amazingly generous of Tucker, because he had no special reason to be well-disposed toward me. We don’t know each other, but our non-relationship had managed to have an awkward side anyway. It’s something I’m really good at, and sometimes I wish I weren’t.

rockcritics:   Tucker again [from the same piece]: “Carson has been writing tough, funny TV reviews for the Village Voice for years, but suddenly people are talking about his deft eviscerations of, say, news anchors because he’s now also writing for Esquire. Like theNew Yorker for Kael, establishment publications confer weight on critics’ judgments–it ain’t fair, but it’s true.” Is Tucker right–are you taken more seriously in Esquire than you were in the Village Voice?

Carson:    Esquire‘s name is probably more helpful with publicists when it comes to something like lining up an early screening of something. But whether I’m taken more seriously or less probably depends on who’s doing the evaluating. In some quarters, after all, the Voice carries infinitely more weight than a men’s mag like Esquire. As for which place makes me more influential, or if I have any influence at all, I wouldn’t have a clue. For one thing, I live in Northern Virginia, pretty much out of the loop, and nobody in the nabe reads either the Voice or Esquire. I think they think I’m unemployed. Which is okay, because either half of them are too or we’re all secretly culture critics. You know, the guy on my block that I think is just a happy-go-lucky pot dealer is really down in the basement, writing the definitive book about Britney. It’s in flawless eighteenth-century French, too. I think it’s called Ou Est Le Plume De Ma Britney.

rockcritics:   Also, how has writing for the Esquire audience–a vaster, possibly more diverse audience–changed your writing, if indeed it has at all?

Carson:    At any publication, you try to get a sense of what you can do, ideally before you take the job but usually by doing it. One reason I admire Tucker–and I did way before he said nice things about me; he just got there first–is that a magazine like EW is basically designed to express the conventional wisdom with pizzazz, and his take on TV isn’t conventional. He’s got no sacred cows, and most ofEW couldn’t exist without sacred cows. But he’s figured out how to have his say and put his idiosyncrasies across and really stake out a critical position there. The thing is, in some ways it’s relatively easy to persuade a specialized audience, so long as you share their terms. Convincing the general reader, who doesn’t have any pressing reason to be intellectually invested in this stuff, is much harder. That’s the real test for a critic.

In my case, I’ve had a lot more freedom to write in my own tone at Esquire than I would have necessarily bet on going in, and that’s increased as we get used to each other. There’s obviously a whole range of references that I could take for granted most Voice readers would either know or refuse to admit they didn’t know, and that meant I could take a lot of inside-y, artsy short cuts to make an argument. Now I’ve got to spell things out more, but I’m not complaining. I mean, I want to be of use to the reader, and one way to be of use to Voice readers is to act as if we’re all up to speed on who Guy Debord is. Besides, I don’t think it hurts my writing to know that there’s a layer of preciosity that now automatically qualifies as self-indulgence. Probably at least some people wish I thought there were two or three.

rockcritics:   In the post-punk era, you wrote for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. Those publications cater to different readerships. Is it difficult to maintain a personal voice of your own when writing for two different publications like that?

Carson:   Again, staying aware of who your readers are is part of a freelancer’s job. If you look down on them, or if you don’t think the magazine that serves them will let you talk to them honestly, you probably shouldn’t take the gig. At Rolling Stone, though, you didn’t have to just take the readers into account. You had to take Wenner into account, and the path to success at Rolling Stone is to assume he’s your only reader. Not that I ever met him face to face, but you still sort of felt like a plane circling King Kong. I did love that five-star review he wrote of Jagger’s last solo album, though. After all these years, even Jann couldn’t find someone whory or desperate enough to kiss up to Old Leatherface for him, so he had to sit down and tap it out himself with those pudgy fingers.

rockcritics:   What editor or editors did you work for at Rolling Stone, and were there notable differences between how that person edited you and how Christgau edited you at the Voice?

Carson:   There was no comparison, but you have to understand that there’s no comparison between Christgau and anybody. What people don’t know unless they’ve written for him is that Christgau would be a legend as an editor if he’d never written a word of criticism. He’s fanatically dedicated and incredibly sharp about the bad spots in a piece, and more patient than you’d ever believe about putting in the work to make it better. He sort of edits by the Socratic method, in that he will not put words in your mouth. Or impose his own ideas about whoever you’re reviewing, even if he thinks your take on somebody is pure hooey. He just keeps prodding you–for hours if need be, and you know it’s messing up his schedule more than it is yours–to come up with your best. Plus which, you’re watching his mind at work, which is an education in itself.

At Rolling Stone, I mostly wrote for Paul Nelson. Once he wasn’t there to stand between Wenner and the reviewers, I didn’t see much future for me there. Not one I wanted, anyway. What was wonderful about Paul wasn’t his editing skills–one of his favorite moves was to change “the band” to “these guys,” mainly because in Rolling Stone style a band was an “it,” not a “they.” Half the readers probably thought the biggest rock stars on the planet were a band called These Guys. What Paul did have, in his unassertive way, was one of the best characters of anybody I’ve ever known. There was a sort of unwavering bedrock of knowing what he cared about that made him a rarity at Rolling Stone. He was so mild that you’d never think someone like this would go to the mat with Wenner, especially since there had been times, I think, when Paul had had very little money and this was obviously a berth worth protecting. But he did it over and over again, when some piece of mine or somebody else’s had pissed off the great Jann, usually by being too complimentary about punk. I think he would have really loved to be in a John Ford or Howard Hawks Western, and instead he was stuck in this sort of grim Anthony Mann one where nobody’s motives are pure but you do what you can. So Paul did what he could.

rockcritics:   What’s the most important lesson you’ve ever learned about your own writing from an editor?

Carson:   One is to always be prepared to defend every line–and with something better than, “Because it sounds good.” Another would be that, if you do have good reasons and the line’s important, fight for it, because good editors don’t respect pushovers. But bad ones love them, so pick your poison. Another, which could raise a few eyebrows coming from me, is that you shouldn’t be clever just for the sake of being clever. I know that’s my rep, insofar as I have one, but I think part of my job is to keep readers entertained. I’m hoping to give them a snort or two along the way, not amuse myself. Not only would that alienate them, they’d be right to feel alienated.

rockcritics:   Do you read any rock mags today and are there any newer music writers that have caught your eye in recent years?

Carson:   Basically, I like my friends. I like Lorraine Ali, who I think is–to quote George W. Bush–very misunderestimated. It’s got to be very tricky to write about rock music at a place like Newsweek, where the basic orientation has so little to do with your turf. But I like how totally unimpressed she is with hand-me-down wisdom and the Great Rock Crit Hierarchy. It’s also just a trip to see her walk into a roomful of rock critics–you know, all these nebbishes with a highly developed sense of their own importance, and suddenly they’re up against five-foot-nine of half-Iraqi California girl who acts like she’s laughing at them all the time, and knows why. It turns them into a bunch of stuffy Rotarians on the spot. If Lorraine were four inches shorter, she’d probably be beloved by now.

I also really like Joe Gross, who I think is just a whiz. Almost his only failing used to be that he was too prone to looking up to all us old dudes, although he’s getting over that in my case now that he’s catching on he’s better at this than I was. I don’t mind that so much when he’s doing rock criticism, but it really burns me when he’s writing about TV.

rockcritics:   In light of Joey Ramone’s recent death, have you gone back to reread your Ramones essay in Stranded, and do you think your words still ring true?

Carson:   I was something like twenty-two when I wrote that, and being reminded of what I thought was effective writing back then makes me wince, so no, I didn’t reread it. I’m really glad the Ramones got in that book thanks to me, because they sure belong there and it did kind of stick out from the list. But I didn’t really deserve to be in Stranded. I got recruited at the last minute because, what do you know, Jim Wolcott dropped out. For a guy who basically can’t stand me–or couldn’t back in the Seventies, which was when we knew each other–Wolcott’s done me more favors by bailing out of jobs. If he ever quits Vanity Fair and the phone doesn’t ring, which I’m pretty sure it won’t, I’m not going to be able to avoid thinking that this particular Poe story has had kind of a flat ending.

But so far as Joey goes, I met Rob Sheffield for the first time not long after he died, and Rob told me that when he heard the news, he thought of that old essay. I was just incredibly touched–it was such a generous thing to say. He told me a really nice story, too. He’d just moved to New York then, and he said that wherever he went, people had their windows open and were sort of defiantly playing “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker” at full blast. And there’s Rob, new in town and walking along and hearing “Sheena” everywhere, and thinking to himself, “Wow–New York City really does have it all.” So now that’s what I think about when Joey comes up, and you know, it’s probably for the best that I live in Virginia. Being in Manhattan and hearing “Sheena” all over the place might have been a little overwhelming. I don’t know how much it comes through in Stranded, but in my Ramones, Joey was the one.

rockcritics:   Craig D. Lindsey in the Philadelphia Weekly wrote of your work in Esquire: “Carson is one of those junk-loving ironist critics, like Armond White and Greil Marcus, who peppers his columns with flowery words and classical literary references to coverup the indecipherable, boneheaded accolades he gives a movie or TV show.” He brings up the irony charge later in the critique as well. So…talk about irony–as it relates to his critique, to your own writing, and to criticism in general. Are you the “junk-loving ironist” that he claims you are?

Carson:   I’m probably going to give you a long answer, but not because I’m especially stung. You know, so much for being universally adored. But I’m not very impressed with any writer who uses “ironist” as a term of abuse, and calling Marcus one is just gaga. Whatever else you think of his work, it’s all about rapture and getting transported. I mean, this is someone who preferred Bryan Ferry to Bowie because he thought Bryan Ferry was more in earnest. He was, too, but Bowie’s insincerity was part of what made him more important, and Marcus has no use for that argument. As for Armond White, calling him an ironist is like saying that Lenin was too flaky. You may not like the guy, but find another put-down.

I’m guessing that what Lindsey means by “ironist” is what you could call the David Letterman version–adopting a sort of winky superciliousness as your basic reaction to things. Well, that’s obviously a hateful attitude, and it’s something that’s always bugged me about Letterman, but it’s got nothing to do with real irony. Real irony is a coping strategy with a moral value, because it lets you stay true to your point of view when you can’t do anything to affect the situation. It’s a useful tool to have in your emotional repertoire, and I’ve always just been sort of puzzled by people who think it’s an end in itself–whether they’re criticizing it or doing it. People forget that what really put the whole Age of Irony in the saddle was that Ronald Reagan was president. You had to become an ironist just to retain some sort of belief in your own sanity.

People also forget that if critics had the same reactions as everybody else, they wouldn’t be critics, which means they just wouldn’t have a whole a lot to contribute to the party. You know, don’t count on them to lead the conga line. Most of them can’t even order pizza without dropping the phone or getting something ghastly on top by mistake. They can tell you there’s better pizza somewhere else, so why do you keep calling Domino’s? I have plenty of bones to pick with intellectuals myself, and most of them would be as appalled to hear me call myself one as I would be depressed to be in their company. But the only way to justify anti-intellectualism is to demonstrate that you’ve come up with something smarter, and nobody ever has. Otherwise, it’s just more of this Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly shit, and I think Matthews, at least, should be ashamed of himself. You know he wrote a good book about Nixon and Kennedy once, before he turned into the screaming fathead he is today.

As for “junk-loving”–well, that’s someone else’s point of view. But if I love something, it means I don’t think it’s junk. I really don’t have any patience with the trash aesthetic; I think people who dig stuff because it’s crap are wasting their time. Or mine, anyway. I won’t deny that there’s a thrill in finding good qualities in something everybody else thinks is ignoble, but that’s my reaction as a writer who likes to stir things up, not as an audience. I mean, I saw good things nobody else did in that David Spade movie Joe Dirt, not because it was a defense of white trash but because it was an informed defense of white trash. But I wasn’t looking for that, and you could have knocked me over with a feather, because up to then I’d never liked David Spade. I’ve probably seen less quote-unquote junk than a lot of the people who knock me for praising it, because I think life is short and I’d rather read as many good books as I can. But when you see something that has a whiff of whatever you define as The Good, you praise it.

You know, what does “junk” mean? Thanks to Stranded, the band I’m most identified with celebrating is the Ramones. The TV shows I was boosting when most critics didn’t have a good word for them were The Simpsons, Roseanne, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wouldn’t call those bad picks. I should have been a race-track tout.

Creem’s Canadian Connection:
Interview with Alan Niester

By Andrew Lapointe (April 2002)

Barbeques and weekend trips with Lester Bangs, dangerous encounters on Cass Avenue in Detroit, and the shenanigans of Richard Meltzer: These are just some of the memories rock critic Alan Niester has of Creem magazine.

Niester is a native of Windsor, Ontario, but grew up with his eyes buried in the rock rags from the States, such as Crawdaddy! and Fusion. In the early ’70s, he began freelancing for Creem and Rolling Stone, which meant traveling to the seedy area of Detroit where Creem was located. Alan has some fond and, incidentally, some strange memories of his time at “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine.”

 

At Spin, writing the Singles column, you were sounding the horn about dance music. Did you go in there with that as a mission?

At the time that was definitely it. Nobody treated dance music seriously at all. Melody Maker was wall-to-wall rock ‘n’ roll when I arrived. It was only by a lot of fighting with editors – a lot of fighting – and by the fact that it soon became obvious, at least for a while, that it had legs. This was still, at this point, still singles music, 12-inch singles music. It was viewed as a fad. It was only when people started to see this was commercially viable that the fighting stopped.

Michaelangelo Matos interviews Frank Owen, a Melody Maker critic in the ’80s who (the way I know his work) eventually covered dance music frequently (and very well, from what I recall) in Spin.

Jaan Uhelszki: Confessions of a Former Subscription Kid

By Scott Woods (April 2002)

As one of Creem‘s senior Editors during the ’70s, Detroit native Jaan Uhelszki was an integral voice during that magazine’s most legendary phase. Uhelszki wrote various columns and dozens of reviews for Creem, though her real forte was the feature profile, in particular her interviews with what used to be disparagingly known as “third generation” rock stars, like Grand Funk Railroad and Kiss. Interestingly, she claims that being a women often aided her in getting the good stories — in part because she wasn’t taken too seriously.

Now based in Berkeley, Uhelszki continues to write for a number of publications, including the British glossy Mojo, as well as Amazon.com.

[Thanks to Jay Blakesberg, who took the photo of Jaan and Joey Ramone.]

Scott:   Please start by telling the readers what exactly you’re up to these days–writing-wise or whatever. Give us a current C.V., please!

Jaan:   Unbelievably, I’m still doing exposés and feature stories on rock’s worst offenders. The more socially outcast a band is, the better I like them. I still like to spend time on the road with bands, and decode their lifestyle and psychology (or is that pathology?) for readers. Getting into the minds of musicians has always been fascinating to me. They really aren’t like the rest of us. I review records for Amazon, do features for Mojo, Alternative Press, the San Jose Mercury, and write liner notes for Time-Life and Sony Legacy.

Scott:   What were you like in high school? Were you popular? Looking back, would you say your social status then greatly influenced who you are now?

Jaan:   I’m not sure my social status determined who I am today, other than the fact that I always looked at myself as an outsider looking in. At the age of 12 I was 5’8″ making me the second tallest person at Lathrup Elementary School. The early height gave me a certain sense of authority, but also set me apart from the 4’11′ more obviously popular kids.

Scott:   When and how did you discover rock and roll? Was this something you shared with others, or was it more of a solitary pleasure?

Jaan:   I grew up in Detroit, the home of Motown, and because of that, we always seemed to have enlightened radio stations that played amazing stuff. The birth of FM radio, in 1968, opened up an entirely new type of music, in terms of bands like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Janis Joplin, et. al., as well creating a whole new mysterious subculture that was at odds with the dominant one. When I listened to the radio I felt a part of something bigger than myself–I had joined an exclusive club, where all of us could “hear” Jimi. I think I still can.

Scott:   Talk about your evolution as a music critic–was it something you were ambitious to do before joining Creem?

Jaan:   I had always wanted to be a music writer. A trip to New York when I was 15 truly opened my eyes, when I first got my hands on a copy of the East Village Other and the Village Voice. They were writing about music in a deep, personal, intimate, intelligent way, and I realized that was exactly what I wanted to do. WhenEye magazine started showing up on news stands when I was in high school it showed me the world of rock celebrity, and I devoured articles by Nik Cohn and Michael Thomas, wishing that I could be doing the same thing. In less than two years I was.

Scott:   According to Jim DeRogatis in Let it Blurt, you started at Creem as the “subscription kid”; then Bangs championed your writing and you moved into an editorial position. What was the first piece you wrote for Creem and how did it come about?

Jaan:   Actually, Dave Marsh has more to do with my first pieces in Creem than Lester. I think he was sick of hearing me beg to be elevated from the mailroom into the editorial offices. He took me along to a press conference at a swanky Detroit hotel, where Smokey Robinson was announcing his retirement from the Miracles, and promised that I could write about it. I think I thought he was kidding, because I never bothered to take notes or even work up a story. About three weeks later, Marsh called me at home about ten o’clock at night and asked me where my piece was. Chagrined, I told him I hadn’t written it. Marsh actually demanded that I drive the twenty plus miles to the Creem house-cum-offices in Walled Lake, Michigan and pick up some Miracles albums, listen to them, and turn in a full blown story by ten the next morning. Chastened, I actually did what I was told–for once, not even bothering to change out of my night clothes. I buttoned up my blue and white checked bathrobe, fuzzy slippers, sped to the farmhouse, arriving at around eleven that night. I stayed up the entire night hammering out the story, which somehow became anOpen Letter to Smokey, begging him not to retire. Oddly enough that first story was the cover story.

Scott:   What exactly were your functions as an Editor at Creem?

Jaan:   When I finally worked myself out of my position as the Subscription Kid–three years after I started working there–I was given a battered desk next to Lester Bangs, which was both a blessing and a curse. He could thrash out reviews and features in what seemed liked mere minutes, making me feel like there was something really very wrong with me, since my writing process was much slower than his. I was responsible for creating the news section, “Beat Goes On,” putting together the movie section, after Roberta Cruger left, penning the movie column, “Confessions of a Film Fox,” writing a record review and/or feature a month. Of course, there was the less glamorous work of copy editing and proofreading, and the obligatory staff meetings, where we would all order in ribs and chips and grape pop from Checker Bar-B-Que, and then get into the most awful rows over what was going to be on the cover. As for those famous captions, they were usually a collaborative effort–we all had really skewed senses of humor and played off each other really well.

Scott:   Was the staff of Creem in any way aligned against Rolling Stone?

Jaan:   It was during that infamous Avis campaign, when the number # 2 car rental company claimed, “We Try Harder” than number #1, Hertz. We felt the same way. We not only believed we tried harder than Rolling Stone, but we were much more irreverent, and as a result more honest. For better or worse, we felt we weren’t beholden to anyone, and made fun of whomever we pleased–often to the detriment of ad sales. We were uncontrollable; the writers at Rolling Stone were very civilized. I think we felt we were much more authentic and rock than they were, and felt a little smug because of it. I guess the smugness made up for big salaries.

Scott:   One of the things I most loved about Creem growing up was the lively, usually hilarious letters section. Was there a lot of mail to choose from? Was all of it legit?

Jaan:   The letters was always my favorite section, I wish I could tell you that we made them up, but we didn’t have to. I always was amazed how much sicker our readers were than we were. Lester was the letters editor, and he was the one who always wrote the pithy, insulting answers, at least from 1971-76.

Scott:   What was the best thing about working at Creem on a daily basis? Also–the worst thing?

Jaan:   The best thing was the camaraderie. How great it was to find my own milieu. Everyday wasn’t so much like going to Disneyland, more like living on Donkey Island from Pinocchio–only we looked entirely normal. Sometimes we would make phony phone calls to rock stars whose numbers we happened to come in possession of, or we would speak entirely in the dialogue of “Amos ‘n Andy.” Then there were the days when publicists would bring up-and-coming musicians to our offices. We felt duty bound to play with their minds–just because we could. I’ll never forget the day our publisher Barry Kramer walked into the editorial offices to find Iggy Pop sitting there–and promptly emptied the contents of a trash can over his beautiful, platinum head. Much to his credit, Iggy found no reason to remove it. The worst part was the hours and the demands on our very souls. It was hard work putting out a monthly magazine, special issues, and books, and we tended to work 18-hour days. I usually got into the office at noon, leaving perhaps by 3:00 A.M. on a regular basis. We saw few outsiders, and sometimes it felt like we all belonged to some cult. Having a separate life was almost impossible.

Scott:   One thing I always associate in my mind with you is the artist interview/profile. You had a very funny way of bringing the stars down to size. (Let’s just say, you were not exactly Cameron Crowe.) What was the first major pop star interview you did? Describe the experience.

Jaan:   I’ve never had any patience with those suck-up, regulation interviews. I figure once you have a rock star in your sights, you’re duty bound to put them on the spot. I grew up reading movie fan magazines, and always wanted to know every single detail about my heroes. I just expanded that philosophy a little, and would query them about the most outrageous aspects of their life I could think of, or ask them the hard questions in a very soft focus way. There’s always something that publicists warn you not to talk about–but I figure if there’s an elephant in the room, you have to acknowledge it, then dissect it. What really surprises me, is how often a star will answer an awkward question. My first interview was a road trip with Steve Miller. I was insanely nervous, but despite his reputation, Miller was really very kind–taking me to dinner at his cousin’s house during one of the tour stops and instructing me in some embarrassing dos and don’ts of on-tour behavior. I remember blushing when he told me writers should never sleep with their interview subjects, because then it would be rather awkward to confront them the next morning with a tape recorder. I always wondered if he said that to the male reporters who toured with him. Ha!

Scott:   A piece that you’re very well known for is I Dreamed I Was On Stage With Kiss in my Maidenform Bra. How did this piece come about?

Jaan:   I’d always been a fan of George Plimpton’s participatory journalism, and was hugely influenced by Paper Lion, his story about training with the Detroit Lions. That book was really a big deal in Detroit, so I got the idea I should do the same thing with Kiss. Oddly enough, I just called up the publicist and asked if I could perform with them. This was in the relatively early days of Kiss’s career, and they were trying everything to break them–remember the Kissathons in Los Angeles that their label, Casablanca Records, sponsored? Anyway they said yes, and the only promise they extracted was that I wouldn’t call Kiss a “glitter band.” As if I would have!

Scott:   Did any members of Kiss respond to the piece afterward?

Jaan:   I was the unofficial Kiss editor at Creem, since no one else ever wanted to cover them, so after the piece, I still continued to write about them. None of them thought it was that big a deal. At the time, it was just another story. It just grew in stature as the years went by, probably because no one else has ever performed with them.

Scott:   Any particularly disastrous encounters with the rich and famous you care to share?

Jaan:   I’ve told this before, but it was my encounter with Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. I’d been on the road with them for over a week and couldn’t get him to agree to an interview. Finally on the last day of the tour, he agreed to an audience on the condition that the publicist had to be there. I agreed, but didn’t realize the implication until I began asking my questions. Jimmy stipulated that I must first ask the publicist my question and then she relay the question to him–even though we all spoke the same language, and I was sitting a mere six feet from him. This went on for about an hour, and was so odd, and rather humiliating. Another weird encounter was the time I was on the road with Crosby and Nash, and I didn’t have a room at the hotel, and was forced to bunk on a pool table. That wasn’t as horrible as it seems, but what was worse was they would only do interviews between 3:30-4:30 A.M.. Being on tour with the Allman Brothers was also rather special. Dickie Betts wouldn’t talk to me at all, and then Gregg Allman wouldn’t allow me to use a tape recorder. We would talk, then I would run off to the bathroom every half-hour or so to write everything down he said. It was really disconcerting. Before I left the tour, Gregg gave me a pair of his boots. They were pure white and a men’s size 10. I have rather large feet, but not that large. I never understood the significance of the gift.

Scott:   When/how did your position at Creem end?

Jaan:   I left in March 1976, for a job in Los Angeles. I was afraid that I was becoming a big fish in a little pond, so I left. Lester left six months after I did.

Scott:   What are your thoughts on Creem after Lester Bangs?

Jaan:   It’s strange, what has been called the “dream team”–Marsh, Bangs, Ben Edmonds, me, Roberta Cruger, John Morthland–had all left by ’76, so the character of the magazine was very different. We were always fighting with the publisher Barry Kramer about what we should cover and how. He always wanted it more commercial, with more pictures, less copy. After we all left, he more or less had his way. There were some really good writers from the later period, most notably Bill Holdship, Sue Whitall, and Rick Johnson.

Scott:   Talk about your relationship with some of the other early Creem cast–Marsh, Barry Kramer, Lisa Robinson, et al. Was it one big happy family?

Jaan:   Lisa lived in New York and sent her copy in, but the rest of us lived together in one of two houses paid for by Creem. It was far from a happy family. There were moments of real simpatico, but with such big personalities, there was bound to be sparks. I remember a vicious fight between Lester and Marsh, when Lester’s recalcitrant and untrained dog Muffin defecated on the floor for what seemed liked the thousandth time. For whatever reason, Marsh had had it, and ceremoniously placed the mound of still warm shit on Lester’s typewriter, Lester walked in to see it, then went after David. No one ever seemed to keep anything in. It was always this living theatre. Often staff meetings would disintegrate into fisticuffs–with someone shot-putting a typewriter through a light table, or pitching a telephone through a window.

Scott:   Who is your favorite writer of all-time, and why?

Jaan:   I’ve always loved Nik Cohn, way before he wrote the magazine piece that became Saturday Night Fever. He was colorful, with a wicked imagination and a really dry, British sensibility, and he never missed a trick. He just had a wonderful way of telling a story, picking out odd little details, which would really define a person. With Nik, God really was in the details.

Scott:   Of all the articles, interviews, and reviews that you’ve written, can you single out one that you’re most proud of?

Jaan:   My Lynyrd Skynyrd piece for Creem, and the follow-up piece I did for Mojo, 20 years after the plane crash. When I interviewed Ronnie Van Zant for Creemin 1976, he told me that he never thought he’d live to see 30. I pooh-poohed his prophecy, attempting to talk him out of what I though was nonsense. It turned out it wasn’t, and he died in a plane crash in October, 1977. To pay back the debt I felt I owed him, I went to Jacksonville to retrace his life, the crash, and his ghost. It was an amazing, revelatory journey, about the mystery of life itself, and really moved me.

Scott:   The part of your rock critic career I’m most familiar with after Creem is the writing you did for Addicted to Noise. How was that experience?

Jaan:   It was really brutal work. We were trying to invent a new type of journalism, really. It was like putting out a daily newspaper about music, with a skeleton staff. I was responsible for all the news seven days a week, as well as doing a feature or two a month, transcribing the long-winded interviews–[Editor] Michael Goldbergliked to use every single utterance from a star’s mouth–as well as getting on the phone with managers, publicists, psychics, hotel porters–anyone who had a scrap of rock news. It was invigorating, and I felt so alive doing it. I remember one night my sister, Michael Goldberg, and I were sitting in a Denny’s following R.E.M’s first show after Bill Berry’s aneurysm, writing an account at 2:00 A.M., so we could have it for the next day’s news.

Scott:   You did pretty major features on a few of the big Brit-pop acts of the mid-90s. Your Noel Gallagher interview, for instance, was one of the first lengthy pieces I read on them from this side of the Atlantic. Did this just sort of happen, or was it a scene you particularly wanted to cover?

Jaan:   I am a total Anglophile. I lived in London for a couple of years, and have a great love for British music. I was a rabid NME reader and had been following their progress up the British charts. When I heard they were coming to San Francisco, I asked for an interview. They were such open, polite innocents then. That is one of the interviews where I couldn’t believe that the interview subject was actually answering my sometimes-intimate questions. It was like Noel was on an English quiz show, and he actually seemed disappointed when I came to the end of my questions. A record company put out that interview on CD; it really is one of my all time favorites.

Scott:   Are you able to say what exactly happened with Addicted to Noise? It seemed to be going very strong, and suddenly it wasn’t around anymore. Any inside scoops you can share?

Jaan:   When Michael Goldberg sold the company to Sonic Net he lost control. For all his foibles, Goldberg was a true visionary–when he wasn’t at the helm, it floundered.

Scott:   What other outlets have you enjoyed writing for? You mentioned something about liner notes, for instance.

Jaan:   I love writing liner notes. You’re able to write a historical analysis of something you really care about–and go much deeper than a mere article. I do a lot of stuff for Time-Life and Sony Legacy. I get to revisit many of those acts I covered in the seventies. For instance, Gregg Allman was much more loquacious when I interviewed him for the Best of Gregg Allman, than when I interviewed him in 1974. When I worked on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s box set, I interviewed 30 or so of his friends and famous fans, and it was incredible. I ended up with tears in my eyes during so many of them. Carlos Santana actually wept while talking about him. As for other outlets, I do stuff for Mojo, USA Today, the San Jose Mercury, Alternative Press, Spin, Blender, and Amazon.com.

Scott:   Have you done much (or any) writing of a non-rock nature?

Jaan:   Yes, I’ve written about politics for a local Berkeley publication, about architecture, photography, food, spiritualism, fashion, and beauty for a number of magazines. I think you can read the culture by what people wear, eat, and believe in, and deconstructing those clues really interests me.

Scott:   What are your thoughts on the present state of rock criticism? Are there any writers or publications that you’re particularly impressed with?

Jaan:   I think that rock criticism is more restrained. When you write a poor review, or piss off a manager you are denied access. That seems to force writers to play it safe. The publications I like are Blender, Mojo, and In Style (because I’m still invariably nosey about star’s lives).

Scott:   What did you think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of Bangs in Almost Famous?

Jaan:   I thought that Hoffman was incredible. He channeled Lester. I interviewed him, and he was eating lunch right through the interview, chewing, talking with food in his mouth and gesturing wildly, just like Lester used to, and I don’t think he was staying in character. He really conveyed Lester’s humanity and kindness, something people often overlooked in him, instead of being captivated by his bombast and the outrageousness of his writing. I think the movie was good, Cameron was forced to create something that would appeal to a large demographic, and while he had to temper the outrageousness of the times for the mainstream, he was able to concoct a truly engaging story.

Scott:   Who would you want to play you in The Jaan Uhelszki Story?

Jaan:   I guess Bridget Fonda. She has the same birthday that I do.

Scott:   What songs would open and close that movie?

Jaan:   ”1969″ by the Stooges and “My Way” by Sid Vicious.

Scott:   Along with a handful of other writers–Ellen Willis, Lisa Robinson, and Lillian Roxon first come to mind–you helped break down the barriers of rock criticism to allow some women through the front door. Did this make your job that much more difficult back when you were starting out? Discuss this in relation to editors, as well as publicists and musicians.

Jaan:   We lived in the hinterland of Michigan, and I don’t think until I did the Kissette story that anyone knew I was a woman. I was always getting mail addressed to Mr. Jaan Uhelszki; in fact, I still do. I think I had an advantage since there were so few women writers, male rock stars really didn’t take you seriously, believing a female reporter to be a groupie. It seems so silly saying this now, but it happened so often, you’d feel like having cards printed that said: “I’m not a groupie.” But on the upside, you’d tend to get better answers to your questions since the stars didn’t think you’d have the guts to actually be hard-hitting in your stories, so they’d tend to ramble on, and tell you more than they would a male counterpart.

Scott:   Did you ever reach a point in your own career where you felt this was a non-issue?

Jaan:   There does tend to be an old boy network at some of the established publications, but I think I always thought being a woman writer was a non-issue. I don’t think I haven’t gotten work because I was a woman.

Scott:   Although you’d never know it from this site, music criticism is no longer as dominated by men as it was 25 years ago. Do you still feel there are major barriers for a female rock critic to overcome?

Jaan:   I think they need to be as fearless as male writers are, and as aggressive in their pursuit of a story. I think woman should form their own network, women helping women. As in life, we’ve never been able to organize successfully enough.

Why Pop Matters: Interview with Sarah Zupko

By Barbara Flaska (May 2002)

It’s a challenge to catch up with Sarah Zupko for an interview. First and foremost, she works in a demanding field. By day, Ms Zupko is an Internet executive at Tribune Media Services, one of the major national and international media syndicates, in Chicago, Illinois. In her spare hours, she devotes much of her time and energy to publishing PopMatters. Described as a “magazine of global culture,”PopMatters is a place on the web where a growing family of savvy readers huddle around their computer screens to thoughtfully engage. PopMatters exists where today’s technology confronts the living drama of popular culture. There is, at least to my knowledge, no other publication quite like PopMatters, on the Internet or anywhere else.

The quick read is that PopMatters offers thoughtful and entertaining cultural criticism from a wide spectrum of international contributors. An ambitious and intelligent project, the magazine has weekly feature stories and regular columns, as well as reviews of books, television, film, comics, and music. It also delves into broader areas: cultural theory; national, ethnic, and gender identities; cyberculture; visual studies; mass media and journalism; sports; high culture vs. popular culture. PopMatters has rightly been described as “cerebral, but not overly so.”

To get some perspective of how extensive this area of inquiry has become over the past forty years, take a peek at PopCultures, Zupko’s other web site. PopCultures features dozens of links to writings by and about the most significant theorists thinking today about culture; their musings amplify and enhance our own understanding of how and why culture works the way it does. There are also links to other media sites in this easy-to-navigate arena. Recognized and appreciated as an important online research tool, PopCultures (a.k.a. Sarah Zupko’s Cultural Studies Center) has been honored by the Scout Report for Social Sciences & Humanities,USA Today, and Britannica, and is a recommended bookmark for anyone with an interest in cultural and social studies or communications theory.

Sarah Zupko studied Musicology, Film, and Drama at the University of Chicago, and media theory at the University of Texas, where she received her M.A. in 1995. Aside from writing novels and plays, she continues active research in the fields of German history, Musicology, and European Cultural and Intellectual History.

As founder, editor and publisher of PopMatters, Zupko keeps the commentaries churning.

Now, before we go any farther, I admit I’m in a unique, some would say conflicting, situation here, because I’ve spent a lot of time with PopMatters–both as a reader and as a contributor. In fact, I’m quite fond of the place.

But one day, I finally decided to write my publisher to find out what it’s really all about.

Barbara:   What are you trying to do with PopMatters?

Sarah:    Offer smart, edgy cultural criticism to a really broad audience. At PopMatters we also try to break down the divisions between different cultural forms, such as music, film, and TV. Yes, we do lots of reviews, but the real interesting stuff is where cultural forms cross over and bleed into one another.

Barbara:   Many people see pop culture as a transient or trivial phenomenon and something not worth intellectualizing about. Others who study pop culture are obsessed and wax poetic or academic. How doesPopMatters find a balance between a lofty academic language and using a language more ‘appropriate’ to the context of pop music, let’s say rock and roll?

Sarah:   The intent from the beginning was to offer criticism smart enough for academic journals, but written in an engaging, entertaining manner that pulls in readers from many backgrounds. I have a background in cultural studies, as do many of the writers, but we share the conviction that formal cultural studies writing often has an elitist, alienating effect, something that rather goes against the Marxist formations of cultural studies.

All culture is political–that’s the primary point to take from cultural studies. And, as such, all culture is valid as a subject of study and critique. In this age of hyper media with millions of messages flying at us each day in multiple media, pop culture is a more valid area of analysis than ever before. Pop culture is literally how we tell our human stories now. Combine that philosophical underpinning with engrossing writing and smart writers and you see how we bridge the “gap” between academia and popular media.

Barbara:   What made you want to be a publisher?

Sarah:   I’ve always wanted to be a publisher. Several years ago the publisher from a major book publishing company told me that he saw that I have publishing in my bones. He said that after talking to me for 10 minutes. Back in high school in Madison, Wisconsin, I put out a music magazine that I Xeroxed and sold in my school. Other folks were doing a lot of that then. That was in the days of new wave and the rockabilly revival.

Barbara:   Do you think it’s true that to run a successful magazine nowadays you must fill a particular niche or cater to a specific readership?

Sarah:   Absolutely, although that niche can be rather large given the right distribution…and the Internet gets around all of those sticky distribution nightmares that you can have with print publications.

Barbara:   Are there differences between writing (or publishing) on the web vs. print?

Sarah:   There’s very little difference writing-wise. Publishing-wise, the web is brilliant, isn’t it? We can reach a global audience of very engaged readers without the distribution nightmares and high printing costs of a print magazine. PopMatters has a big European following. I can’t imagine how we’d get a print version of the magazine into all the book shops in Europe as well as the U.S., being an indie publication.

Barbara:   Do you think Internet publishing has changed music journalism for better or worse?

Sarah:   Definitely for the better. It has opened up the exclusive club doors to more voices and given lots of talented writers the opportunity to get published that may have never had the chance in a purely print world.

Barbara:   What sort of people write for PopMatters?

Sarah:   There’s not a single sort of writer and that is a good thing. We have a cross-section of professors with PhDs, professional journalists, long-time music experts and fans and college undergraduates getting their first publication experience with us. We like it this way. Lots of different experience levels and varying life experiences make for a more interesting publication. When you’re dealing with something as broad as “popular culture”, I would say that it’s almost a necessity.

Barbara:   How many people read PopMatters and who are they?

Sarah:   We currently have 250,000 monthly readers–a figure that eclipses many large, print entertainment magazines. The audience is very international and we have a large following in the academic world, within the entertainment industries and among pop-culture heads and smart consumers.

Barbara:   What’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard someone say about PopMatters?

Sarah:   A music editor from one of the major U.S. newspapers once said that PopMatters is the model for good music criticism. I was chuffed about that to say the least.

Barbara:   How is your job with PopMatters different from your regular work at the Tribune?

Sarah:   At Tribune Media Services, I work in the field of interactive marketing. I’m responsible for all of the online and interactive marketing efforts of the company. Tribune Media Services is the syndication arm of Tribune Company. It’s quite different from PopMatters, where I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do: create a compelling publication from the ground up, direct editorial, work with writers, do business development. I’d say that the lessons I’ve learned from running PopMatters have helped my work at Tribune more than the other way around. That said, working at Tribune has given me a thorough education in the realm of media syndication and product management, things that will help PopMattersgrow over the long term.

Barbara:   Can you give me some more background information…Where you were born, went to school…

Sarah:   I was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Denver and Chicago and have lived in London as well. I did my undergrad work at the University of Chicago, which has a splendid program called General Studies in the Humanities. That allowed me to study music, film, art, and drama. I began life at U of C as a music major, but wasn’t happy being confined to a single cultural form. PopMatters is quite a logical development of my interest in all things cultural and pop cultural. I was studying formally as a musicologist and am just as comfortable writing about classical music and Weimar art as I am about pop music and the like. I’ve also studied history intensively since high school and am a specialist in 19th and 20th century European cultural and intellectual history, particularly British and German. To tie it all together, I received my M.A. in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.

Barbara:   Do you have a personal connection with music? Play any instruments, dance, sing?

Sarah:   I’ve played guitar since I was seven and have been writing songs and singing since about age 11. I also play mandolin and have had stints playing piano and banjo. In college, I studied music theory and voice and was contemplating a rather frivolous career as a cabaret singer where I could indulge in my massive love for the songs of Noel Coward and Cole Porter.

Barbara:   When did you discover rock and roll and which artists were part of that experience?

Sarah:   I discovered rock ‘n’ roll at age two when I crawled around my mother’s sewing room and discovered the sleeve of Sgt. Pepper’s on the floor. I was intrigued by all the figures and the cartoonishness of it and I loved “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” That began an affair with the Beatles that has lasted my entire life. At five, I would sing “Rocky Raccoon” and “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da.” By seven I had every Beatles record, then I really started branching out into early rock ‘n’ roll–Elvis, Buddy Holly and the like.

Barbara:   Did you know you wanted to be a writer early on in your life?

Sarah:   Yes. I started writing songs around 11 and was trying to write novels, plays and opera librettos–I told you I love classical music–in high school.

Barbara:   How did you first get into writing about music?

Sarah:   In high school I was writing for the magazine that I put out. Then several years ago, I started writing a syndicated music column for college newspapers through Tribune Media Service’s College Press Exchange.

Barbara:   If forced to choose, who is your all-time favorite writer? Would you say this person exerts a bigger influence on your style or on your ideas? (Feel free to discuss others who’ve influenced you as well.)

Sarah:   Noel Coward hands down. I think he’s the funniest person who ever lived. I’ve always loved reading plays and Private Lives always has me in stitches. I’m an admirer of his songs, plays, style and way of being. Coward has influenced my style more than anything else, especially in the plays and fiction that I have written. Other favorite writers are W. Somerset Maugham, Hermann Hesse, Anton Checkov, and George Bernard Shaw. I’m also a fan of great historians like Ian Kershaw, who can make history read like a novel, and superb historical fiction writers like Edward Rutherford (London, Sarum, Russka) and James Mitchner.

Barbara:   Your favorite music magazines and critics in your formative years? Which critics and writers were your favorites and which ones influenced you?

Sarah:   Trouser Press was my favorite magazine in my teenage years. It was the one magazine I could get in the States that kept me up on all the British bands I loved. It was a sad day when they closed shop. More recently, it’s been Q, Mojo, and Uncut that I have followed religiously. Unlike many of the mainstream American publications, these U.K. publications offer really in-depth articles of the quality of a piece in the New Yorker. They treat music seriously, for the most part. I must also admit a guilty love forNME, even with all their eternal trendiness. It’s still a great place to hear about up-and-coming bands. On this side of the pond, I quite like and respect The Big Takeover and Magnet. There’s no one music writer that has influenced me, rather the overall style, tone and smartness of Mojo and Uncut have been an influence. But really, so have the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s.

Barbara:   How has the critical landscape changed since you first started writing, or has it?

Sarah:   Not really.

Barbara:   Was there ever a “Golden Age” of rock criticism?

Sarah:   Well, we’re not really in an era of star rock critics, but that doesn’t mean there ever really was a golden age. That’s all in popular perceptions. Just like there is always good and great music to be found, there is always interesting and compelling criticism to be found. Whether that criticism is present in major mass-market publications is another story, but it’s always around in one form or another.

Barbara:   What piece of your own writing are you most proud of? Can you summarize what you were trying to get at in that piece?

Sarah:    It’s impossible to narrow it to one because it always changes. I’m seldom happy with something that I wrote for very long. I am rather proud of the review I wrote of the Jam tribute album Fire and Skillthat was basically my defense of Paul Weller as a consummate songwriter and a refutation of the perception in the U.S. that The Jam were just a cute mod band. I’m also pleased with my M.A. thesis, which looked at the resurgence of Russian nationalism in the early ’90s and was one of the first serious English language texts on Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Barbara:   What specifically keeps you interested in writing about music after so many years?

Sarah:   Music and writing have been the two major loves of my life. When I could finally blend them, it made all the sense in the world. I can’t imagine not doing it, frankly. Only trouble is finding time these days what with my day job and handling the editing and publishing duties at PopMatters. My goal over the next year is to start writing a lot more and do writing for more publications.

Barbara:   You’re also a syndicated music columnist. Where do you publish now?

Sarah:   I’ve stopped writing that column, but am about to begin writing a new column on British popular music for PopMatters that I hope will also get picked up in other venues.

Barbara:   What was your last music article about?

Sarah:   A review of a Coldplay and JJ72 concert here in Chicago.

Barbara:   What’s the most important thing to remember when writing about music?

Sarah:   That the article isn’t about you, it’s about the music and the music has a historical and cultural context. It’s important to place music within that context to both treat music with the respect it deserves and hopefully to educate your readers.

Barbara:   Do you have a favorite period or genre of music?

Sarah:   That varies on my mood. There are so many genres and periods of music that I am passionate about…might as well go in chronological order. Nineteenth century German classical music: Beethoven’s concertos, lieder, and symphonies; Schubert’s and Schumann’s lieder; Wagner’s operas–I’m a major Wagnerian actually. 1920s-1940s: the golden age of American popular song (with the Brit Noel Coward thrown in there): Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin. Mid-’60s: The Beatles, The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Zombies. The late ’70s/early ’80s: The Jam, The Clash, The English Beat. Mid-to-late ’90s British indie: Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, Manic Street Preachers.

Barbara:    Any new music that makes you believe in the power of music?

Sarah:   Yes, great new British stuff like the Super Furry Animals and their psychedelic masterpiece Rings Around the World, Travis’ stadium-size anthems and a hundred other bands that prove there’s always good music to be found. Plus, the fertility and variety of the electronic music scene that makes for some of the best musical brain food since early 20th century classical music and ’50s jazz.

Barbara:   What are the main functions of your job as an Editor? Was it necessary to be a writer in order to do these jobs well?

Sarah:   I guide the overall editorial direction of PopMatters as Editor & Publisher, but I also double as Music Editor. On the E&P side, I have to build our industry relationships, handle all the technology issues, manage all the section editors, and do tons of grunt work. On the Music Editor side of things, I make review and feature assignments, serve as the primary contact with the record labels and publicists, manage a crew of editors and associate editors, and also do plenty of copy editing and fact checking…oh, and spend dozens of hours each month making lists of the CDs that come into our mailbox for review.

Being a writer myself is obviously vital in dealing with other writers. I’m respectful of the unique voice each writer has and I’m leery of dictating a particular writing style to the music team as a result. My being a creative writer means I want to foster that creativity in the writing staff.

Barbara:   What do you find most difficult about editing?

Sarah:   Bad writers with insufferable egos. Good writers always want to get better. Bad ones often think they are singularly brilliant and then resist all attempts at even the faintest amount of editing or critique.

Barbara:   What makes a good editor?

Sarah:   Someone who knows their subject thoroughly, has excellent people skills, is well-read and knows good writing when they see it, has thick skin, and can foster creativity and inspire writers to constantly improve while seeing that they enjoy their work.

Barbara:   A lot of people interviewed for rockcritics have suggested that writers need to expand their musical horizons more, that many writers nowadays are too comfortable in their little corner of the world. And yet, in most publications, you often see the same writers covering the same territory. How do you feel about that? Should people stick to doing what they’re good at?

Sarah:   People should certainly do what they’re good at, but they should also be constantly educating themselves, not remaining static, so that they can become good at new things and develop expertise in new genres and with a wider range of artists. I’m endlessly reading about music in magazines and books to learn more about genres that pique my interest. New artists I like, I research and learn about their influences and that, in turn, leads me to even more artists and more research. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid and always will. Nothing galls me more than hearing people say “there’s no good music anymore.” There’s always good music and always has been. Dig around, you’ll find it.

Barbara:   You must, no doubt, get a pile of submissions and proposals from hopeful writers. What advice would you give to someone trying to break in to this field?

Sarah:   Know your stuff, write with some real personality, and keep music writing about the music.

Barbara:   Any particular challenges you faced as the result of being a woman with your writing, editing, publishing, work, society, life? (And how did you cope with those obstacles?)

Sarah:   Starting your own magazine largely gets around those issues. Being a syndicated columnist for Tribune, I did feel the boy’s club atmosphere of the rock journalism world a bit more, but it’s honestly not an issue for me now. It’s true many music magazines have far more male writers than female. PopMattershas made a conscious effort to recruit a very diverse staff in terms of gender, race and sexual orientation. It’s those different life experiences that give our criticism overall a more interesting edge.

Barbara:    What have you been up to lately? Any other projects you can’t wait to get started on?

Sarah:   I’m developing a column dealing with British rock and plan to have that rolling on PopMatters(and maybe some other places as well) in a few months. I’ll be looking at syndication opportunities for that. I also plan to write a piece on the state of cultural studies for a new cultural studies print journal. I’m going to do more writing for print magazines too.

This PDF version of a fanzine called Osmotic Tongue Pressure (dated… 1999, maybe?) features a very lengthy interview with Richard Meltzer.

“I want to make a case that ‘Surfin’ Bird’ is the most important single that I’ve ever dove into. And lived inside of.” (I can’t wait to read the rest of this.)

Barbara Flaska, a longtime contributor to rockcritics.com (she has also been published at PopMatters), has been posting all sorts of stuff about Zappa on her long-running blog, Flaskaland. What she’s been writing there — and the best way to find the stuff, which is voluminous, is to keyword-search her site for “Zappa,” “Frank,” “Beefheart,” etc. — is not criticism of Zappa per se, but rather, her memories of growing up with Frank in Claremont, CA, circa the late ’50s/early ’60s — a few years before fame and fortune came a-knocking at Frank’s door. Given my recent, somewhat obsessional curiosity about FZ, I thought it would be fun to engage her in a conversation about all this. I called her at her home in Fallbrook, CA, on Sunday, Sept. 22, and we chatted for more than an hour. I’ve sliced the discussion here into three time-manageable parts. Thanks to Barbara for taking the time to share these stories with me.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Stuff Referenced:

- Claremont, CA
- The Blackouts
- Ronnie & The Pomona Casuals
- Cucamonga/Studio Z
- Art Laboe
- “Mr. Clean“
- Zappa on Steve Allen (1960)
- The Johnny Otis Show
- Droodles
- 1960 Election/JFK
- General Dynamics
- 1985 PMRC hearings

Rolling Stone Editor Nathan Brackett Snubs Breakfast Reviews, Predicts Klezmer Kraze

By Jason Gross (June 2002)

You may not think you know who Nathan Brackett is but trust me, you know his work. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve heard of a magazine calledRolling Stone. Claiming a seven-digit circulation, any release that’s written up in its record reviews section is bound to be seen by a large chunk of people. Heading up that section of the magazine and deciding which records make the cut there, Brackett, indeed, has an important and influential job.

Growing up in a small town north of Boston, Brackett credits mid-to-late ’80s hip-hop with getting him serious about music criticism; he remembers fruitlessly haunting magazine shops in college looking for a copy of the Source or anything else that covered the music that he loved.

After getting his first taste of ink at the University of Wisconsin’s Daily Cardinal (where his very first piece was on the controversy surrounding Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome”), Brackett dreamt of making it to New York to get in the thick of all the magazine homesteads. He got his first job at a national publication when his mother alerted him to an internship position opening up at Musician magazine in neighboring Gloucester, Mass. When the magazine had an office lackey job open up in their New York office in ’91, he jumped at it, just to be where he always knew he should be. After spending a few years there and working his way up to Assistant Editor (as well as freelancing for Vibe, Option, and Grand Royale), he made his way to the newly opened N.Y. offices of Time Out, working as Music Editor there in ’95. When he got a call about an opening at Stone, Brackett leapt at the opportunity and has held down his job for the last five years.

Jason:   What did you pick up from working with different editors when you were starting out?

Nathan:   It was hard for me at to get feedback because I was doing short reviews. Any writer will probably tell you that it’s hard to get feedback from professional editors ’cause they just want to get the copy in ON deadline. I learned that just being able to write in English is an important first step from people like Bill Flanagan, Mark Rowland and Tony Sherman at Musician. Just being clear is a virtue. From there, you can try and say something a little more interesting. I’d see so many of these smart people who wanted to write but couldn’t quite get their point across. These editors drilled that into me: it’s like the idea that it’s important to be able to play scales before you can play something more.

Jason:    What was your impression of Rolling Stone before you started working there?

Nathan:   I grew up with Rolling Stone–my folks always had a subscription. I guess I have this kind of primal thing for the kind ofRolling Stone font in my head. I loved Rolling Stone and I thought everything looked good there even though the first cover I remember was the Perfect one with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis! [laughs] Even when I was at Musician, I remember being impressed with what Rolling Stone was doing under David Fricke as the Music Editor and seeing how they managed to balance covering bands that were huge with stuff that they actually liked.

Jason:   What kind of things have you learned from working there?

Nathan:   That…writing well is hard! [laughs] Also, that an enormous amount of work goes into even the basic news reporting about, say, VH1 hiring a new president, to give you a recent example. It’s hard to do that well. Professionalism has a bit of a bad name in rock critic circles but there is a good reason for it at some level. A lot of people talk about some of the good old days of rock criticism. I’ve gone back and read a lot of those, looking through old Rolling Stones and I’m not sure if I would want them to return. I remember reading a Charles Perry review from the early ’70s, and it’s basically him talking about his morning–walking up, making himself breakfast–and then he finally got to the record in the last paragraph. Also, I’ve learned that on a certain level, keeping it simple is a real virtue with rock criticism, and just reporting about music in general. I think that’s kind of Jann Wenner’s gift actually–he’s smart enough to know that on a very basic level, you have to keep things simple.

Jason:   So what’s a good review look like to you?

Nathan:   Well one thing that a lot of rock critics do when they start out is they start writing for other rock critics.

Jason:   Probably because they are.

Nathan:   Yeah, they are! [laughs] And I find with young writers, there’s this kind of impulse to show what you can do and to show that you own a copy of…the Beastie Boys’ “Cookie Puss” EP, or that you really know something about the MC5 and that you can really draw a line between them and a new Detroit band. In doing that, people forget that they need to connect with a reader. There’s somebody who actually just cares about music, who might not be a rock criticism fan, who’s picking up an issue of Rolling Stone, Spinor Blender, and really just wants to find out what something sounds like and whether it’s worth checking out. There are really different things that I look for in different rock critics. People like James Hunter or Ben Ratliff are real music thinkers–they think about music all day and they’re able to communicate those thoughts in their writing and they always have something interesting to say. Whereas some writers are a lot better at just connecting with readers. Rob Sheffield is one of my favorite writers of all time. He’s somebody who could be a very good Greil Marcus imitator but he puts a premium on being an entertaining writer and connecting with readers and saying something smart along the way. I guess I look for a piece that succeeds on its own terms and something that can really connect with me.

Jason:    Since you keep talking about the reader, who is a Rolling Stone reader? When you’re editing your section, obviously you have to keep in mind who the audience is.

Nathan:    I do think about this but I think there are a lot of different types of readers. It’s a tough question ’cause Rolling Stone has such an enormous circulation. I try to think of different readers when I try to do every review section. With Rolling Stone, I’m trying to think if a piece of writing can connect with both an 18-year-old college kid who cares about music and the kind of lifer subscriber who still cares that we review the new Neil Young record. Sometimes I try to get in an ‘older sister record’–as in, “it’d be nice to turn my older sister onto this David Gray record.” Alongside that, we try to include the stuff that’s getting a lot of attention on MTV or that people are talking about.

Jason:    So to balance it out to be inclusive, you need to do that in the sweep of the whole section, rather than trying to do that in a single review?

Nathan:    Yeah, certainly. It’s tough because not many magazines are doing what we’re trying to do: address the entirety of pop music.Spin has the luxury of not trying to do that. Blender does try to do that. And your daily papers try to do that. So you find yourself speaking to different constituencies. I’d like to think that anybody who cares about music on some level will find something in any given reviews section that I’ve done.

Jason:    Being at Rolling Stone, you obviously function as a gatekeeper to a lot of the music that comes out. How cognizant are you of that in your work?

Nathan:    I had this kind of deer-in-the-headlights kind of moment when Mark Kemp asked me to be Reviews Editor after about six months into this job. OH MY GOD! You actually decide which records get reviewed in Rolling Stone. I found here that you really can’t think about that. [laughs] I try to be cognizant on the level that every review that we do is going to be read very seriously and that a band spent a year of their lives off and on with every record that we review and that a lot of bands who read our reviews are going to care enormously about what we have to say and that hopefully, a lot of readers will care about what we have to say. Most people would agree that we’re on the less glib side of reviewing. Rolling Stone was founded on a certain amount of respect for the artist, and that’s the line that’s gone through the magazine throughout its history. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think there’s a place for pure subjectivity in other magazines. But I think it’s a good thing that there are people out there who have a certain sense of…for lack of a better term, newspaper-propriety when it comes to music.

Jason:    How much freedom are you given with your section?

Nathan:    I’m given a lot of leeway. Generally, I discuss the lead review with my boss, Joe Levy. From there on, I’m pretty much given an incredible amount of freedom.

Jason:    So there’s no pressure from above that something has to be in there, or that they need a certain kind of review for any particular artist?

Nathan:    Yeah! As I said, I think there are certain institutional traditions that any editor for any magazine is cognizant of. But on a day-to-day basis as far as what reviews are going into any given section, I feel a lot of freedom to do my work.

Jason:    What kind of traditions are you talking about at Rolling Stone?

Nathan:    It is Rolling Stone, and one of the founding guidelines of the magazine is that there are people out there who still care about a lot of the classic rock of the ’60s and the ’70s. That there are people who care when Neil Young makes a new record–or they should care. We also try to cover wherever pop culture is going on a given two week period, and so we cover stuff that people are buying or what they’re hearing on the radio. We think that people are curious who, say, Trik Turner is. Then, after that, we try to turn people on to music that we think is worthwhile.

Jason:    With that last point, how difficult is it to get in reviews of bands or performers who aren’t quite yet in the public/mainstream consciousness? In other words, they’re not popular yet, or they may never be.

Nathan:    I think we try to do that in every issue. That’s the fun part of the job–I don’t see that as hard! I get excited when we do that. That’s what keeps me doing it. When David Fricke does his “On the Edge” column, he’d say the same thing about his work. It’s purely his personal favorite records. I guess I just don’t feel that we’re going out on a limb when we review an independent record or something that’s just not established. I think every section has a couple of records that the casual music fan hasn’t heard on K-Rock.

Jason:    You brought up Spin and Blender before. Do you think about these magazines and their work when you’re doing your section?

Nathan:    Not really. I don’t feel an enormous sense of competition with them. I covet the amount of pages that Rob Tannenbaum gets in Blender for his reviews section! Beyond that, I don’t feel this daily pressure–”oh my God, are they going to get a copy of the new Flaming Lips before us? We have to get there first! Let’s make an exclusive!” (laughs) I’m happy that there are a few national music magazines where a writer can get work from. The more pay-days out there for rock critics, the better.

Jason:    How do you see your section in the scope of the rest of the magazine?

Nathan:    Well, it’s the section of the magazine where we get to say what we like. Whereas different parts of the magazine are just covering what’s out there. As I said before, we have a certain responsibility to cover records that people are buying or are at least on the radar. But we also get to say what we really think about them. I can’t tell you how many times it’s happened, though, where we haven’t covered an artist (in the reviews section) and then they appear on the cover. [laughs] It happens. And there have been times when we’ve stiffed an artists’ record in the same issue that we’ve given them a cover story. So, sometimes there’s a bit of a tension, but it’s not something that I deal all the time with in the office. When Joe Levy is negotiating a cover shoot or something, I don’t hear, “hey, we better get them a decent review.”

Jason:    With all the work you have to do as an editor, do you find any time to do any writing yourself?

Nathan:    It’s hard. I tried to do it once every few months. I think every editor should write a little bit. Otherwise, you forget what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an edit. I’ll have someone like Joe do that and it’s always a treat to do that with him.

Jason:    For the reviews section, to some extent, your own views/opinions come into place?

Nathan:    Yeah, absolutely. If that didn’t come into play, we’d just be taking focus groups to decide on reviews. It comes into play for every album that we review. Although I will say that I do have respect for a writer’s tastes and I have reviews of countless records in the section that I’ve totally disagreed with. I’ve even raised the star rating for some reviews of records that I didn’t like if, say, the review read like a four star review but the writer only gave it three-and-a-half stars. By the same token, I’ll lower a star rating if it feels that the writer didn’t make the case.

Jason:    On average, how much music do you listen to every day?

Nathan:    It’s funny…I find that I cram in a lot of music in between issues. I have a hard time listening to music and giving it the attention it deserves when we’re closing an issue. If you don’t include the whole record, I’ll listen to 40-50 a week.

Jason:    What kind of criteria do you use to decide what you’re going to listen to based on the hundreds of records that come out each week?

Nathan:    A lot of it is trusting writers. I have a lot of people out there who turn me on to records. And then, there’ll be records I’ll be curious about. Those are my main guidelines. And then there’ll be something that I’ll pick up because it has an interesting album cover or something. It’s nice when something just comes out of the pile and we end up reviewing it, but it’s pretty rare.

Jason:    Do you think the whole MP3 craze and the peer-to-peer networks that have been built up around it are going to make review columns like yours obsolete?

Nathan:    Not really. I think if anything, people need more guidance because of the Internet. People have access to all this music. It’s a great thing that somebody can read Rolling Stone and then go on the Internet and download half the songs that are written about in the reviews section. I think with the Wild, Wild West of the Internet, people are looking to, for lack of a better term, a brand that they can trust. A few years ago, collaborative filtering was going to do away with record reviews: that’s where they say, “if you like this, then you’ll also like this!”

Jason:    Oh yeah, Amazon uses that system.

Nathan:    Right. I don’t know if it works for you but when I go on to Amazon, I bought my brother-in-law an electric drill three years ago and now they recommend drilling magazines to me all the time. I think it’d be a shame if people felt that they were fed further into their demographic. That’s what this kind of filtering does. One of the points of rock criticism is that it can open your ears to something else that you might not have heard of.

Jason:    A lot of people are wondering about the future of Rolling Stone with the recent change in staff and the increased competition. How do you see this?

Nathan:   Right now, we don’t know. We’re going to have a new Managing Editor, hopefully within a few weeks, and we’ll see. What I’m hoping is that we’re going to have more room for record reviews. That’s what I’ve been led to believe and that’s a good thing. Right now, I’m pretty optimistic, but I don’t know.

[Editor's note: Following the recent, much publicized news of Wenner's hiring of Ed Needham, formerly of FHM, we asked Nathan if he knew specifically what direction Needham planned to take the magazine in. Here's his response: "My impression is that a lot of what he was hired to do is package the magazine better--yes, there will probably be more short stuff in the magazine, but it's going to be done well, and in a Rolling Stone way rather than a Maxim or FHM way. The magazine will always have an article or two in every issue with some heft. The difference may be that we advertise better all the little stuff we do well-'Random Notes,' music news, and short record reviews, for example. I have to address one thing, though: I love when the magazine gets called irrelevant--and then the New York Times runs a front page article about our new Managing Editor, or you read about it on the frigging CNN ticker! People have been saying Rolling Stone has been going to the dogs since we put David Cassidy on the cover in 1972, and we're still here."]

Jason:    Do you yourself work with Jann a lot, and get feedback from him?

Nathan:    Yeah! It’s pretty exciting to work with him. He’s a great talent. He’s kept the magazine simple but he’s not afraid to fiddle with it. That’s why it’s been around for 30 years. You have to keep on your toes with him.

Jason:    What do you mean by that?

Nathan:    Well, he’ll always ask you whether some little section that you’ve been doing for the last year is still a good idea. He doesn’t really feel like there are any sacred cows in terms of the actual format of the magazine. And you know, he’s often right!

Jason:    What other music magazines out there are doing good work?

Nathan:    It’s easier for me to say what writers I like ’cause that’s what I gravitate towards rather than certain magazines. I love everybody from the New York Times–I’ll read Jon Pareles, Ben Ratliff and, formerly of the Times, Ann Powers. I’ll always check out the Voice–I still love Bob Christgau. A lot of the British music magazines have a real energy which is just part of their culture–the throw-it-up-and-tear-it-down kind of culture. So I’m always entertained by Q and NME.

Jason:    If there would be anything you could change about your reviews section, what would it be?

Nathan:    To get twice as many pages–it would give us the pretense of being comprehensive, which is very hard to do now. I’d love to feel that we could have a guide to every record that you could possibly care about coming out in a two week period. Right now, we have to be a lot more selective. I think the world could deal with 10 pages of records every two weeks, but maybe I’m just speaking for myself.

Jason:    Want to make any predictions about the next big thing?

Nathan:    Klezmer in ’03! It’s all going to be about klezmer wedding bands. Expect a cover story soon.

The Goldberg Variations: Neumu Editor Addicted to Criticism

By Barbara Flaska (July 2002)

Michael Goldberg has stacked up so many fine achievements that reading through his biography can be alternately humbling and inspiring. He served a long apprenticeship in print publishing, freelancing for many years before ending up, in 1984, as Senior Writer and Associate Editor with Rolling Stone. In 1994, back when the Internet was a fledgling medium, Goldberg started up Addicted To Noise, a pioneering multimedia music web site. Two years later, in mid-1997, ATNmerged with SonicNet, which in turn was purchased by MTV Networks in mid-1999. The primary function and form of ATN was increasingly lost in the shuffle and finally overwhelmed; Goldberg then left the corporate media world to chill out. After which time, he re-dedicated himself to music and decided to put his skills back to work. He eventually formed Neumu, another online site but one purposefully designed without a revenue plan on start-up. Goldberg recently spent some time with me rhapsodizing about the writers and artists who assemble at Neumu. Conceived as a non-commercial site dedicated to music and art, Neumucelebrated their first birthday on 1 June 2002.

[Photo of Michael Goldberg below by Lin Marie deVincent.]

Michael:    Neumu is a collaboration between myself and the Australian artist/designer Emme Stone. We’re partners in the site. I feel very strongly that the way editorial and other “content” is presented is as important as having strong writing, photos, animations, etc. Emme is quite brilliant as both an artist and designer, and I think her work really does a good job of framing the editorial, and setting the right mood.

I began writing a column for ATN back in late 1994 that evolved into The Drama You’ve Been Craving. As a writer, this column has become my main outlet. I finally found my “voice” when I began writing it. These days, “The Drama…” is where I bring together my unique take on music and how music and life fit together. I named the column after a Sleater-Kinney song because I love Sleater-Kinney’s music and what they represent (doing things independent of the corporate world with artistic integrity, making powerful statements through music and the way they handle themselves as artists), and because I hope that my columns provide “the drama you’ve been craving,” stimulating people to think about music in new ways, to check out artists they are unfamiliar with, that kind of thing. I’m very proud of the column, and there are links to many of them in the “Drama” area of Neumu.

Addicted To Noise was my first try at creating a magazine that dealt with important artists and the music they make. When I started ATN, I felt that a great online magazine about the music that myself and the contributors loved would find an audience, and that the magazine itself could be a kind of “art piece” at the same time that it would allow the people working on it to make a living. While I still believe that is possible, I also think the timing was wrong, and that it will be some time before that is actually possible. I do think that, five or ten years from now, it will be possible to create a cool online magazine that will also be a successful business. I also think that from December 1994 until about the end of 1997, ATN was a pretty amazing magazine.

It’s true that ATN was the first web music magazine, so it certainly has had a lot of influence. I know that from the kind of feedback I’ve got from people who told me that ATN inspired them to start their own online music magazines and sites. It’s flattering for sure. But that isn’t the reason that I did it. I started ATN because I felt that by 1994 there wasn’t a good rock magazine–online or off. I thought that the Web was the perfect medium for a serious rock mag with a lot of attitude that would cover cool music. And I was right.

Neumu is the result of everything I’ve learned about doing online magazines up until now, combined with everything that Emme Stone has learned about designing them–plus her wise input regarding art and many other things related to the site.Neumu is, I believe, much more extreme than ATN ever was in terms of what we focus on. Much more coverage of lesser-known artists. With Neumu, we started from the premise that the site would be 100% about the art (music, words, film, art, photographs) that those involved in the site really dig, and that it would not be a commercial site. We’ve stayed true to the initial vision.

Barbara:    How did it all start for you; how did you start writing about music?

Michael:    I became a huge fan of music when I was a kid (basically when I was around 11 years old). And like a lot of people I heard the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Kinks all that stuff on AM radio which actually played a fair amount of good music at that time. We’re talking the mid-sixties, but basically, in 1964, maybe the end of ’63, was when I first heard rock and roll.

It was like being hit by lightning or something. I particularly remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s weekly TV show and it was like being hypnotized, it was so intense. It didn’t take anything to go from not knowing what rock and roll was as a kid to this was all I cared about. So that’s how I came to rock and roll.

Always, as a kid, I liked to write, and was good at writing; and I loved to read. So these two things–a passion for rock and roll and a passion for writing–came together. As a kid, I started reading Ralph J. Gleason, and then John Wasserman, the entertainment critics who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. I would read what they would write about music and the arts. RJG in particular was writing about the SF underground rock scene quite early on (the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Charlatans, the dance concerts, etc., etc.). And being in the San Francisco Bay Area (I grew up in Mill Valley), pretty quick after things were happening, you were seeing things in the paper about it. That and getting over to the city and seeing what was going on and getting a sense of it.

So at a relatively young age, the idea that you could write about music became part of my world view. And other than these occasional articles in the Chronicle–we got the Chronicle every day so I had that in my environment (when you’re 11 it’s a little different than when you’re 15, 16, 17–you’re a lot more limited to what you come in contact with)–the only other things out there were these teen magazines like 16. So you could buy the teen magazines but there was no rock criticism. They were pretty cheesy, but they were the only source of information about the bands you cared about such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. So I would buy those. The real breakthrough obviously was when Jann Wenner started publishing Rolling Stone, because then you have the blueprint for everything that followed.

Barbara:    How did you make the leap from reading what other people wrote about music to writing about music yourself?

Michael:    There might have been some music things I wrote in junior high school. But I think the beginning of actually writing about music was in high school where I became the Arts Editor of the school paper. Also, when I was 15, a friend named Toby Byron–who went on to manage Michael Bloomfield and has since done a lot of interesting things including produce a series of jazz documentaries long before the Ken Burns series–the two of us, with a couple of other friends, published a rock magazine called Hard Road–we took the title from the John Mayall album, A Hard Road.

We were 15, and we managed to get Jerry Garcia to let us interview him. This was at a point where the Grateful Dead were about to record American Beauty, so they were still experimental and a fairly new band as opposed to a band that had been around forever. It was a pretty eclectic magazine–we interviewed Mose Allison, Jerry Garcia at his house in Larkspur, a band named Clover (a really great country-rock band at that time; they made a couple of country-rock albums for Fantasy. They were really good, they never really captured it on record–but they were an amazing country-rock band at that point). Clover lived in Muir Beach. And they had friends who were in a band called Flying Circus–both of them doing this country-rock thing, a rockabilly thing at a time when this wasn’t really going on.

So we did interviews, and I took photographs. We had lots of record reviews. We got all our friends to do record reviews and I wrote some, of course. And we published this thing and took it all around to bookstores in the Bay Area and got it into these bookstores. We learned a lot doing this one issue. It took us all summer to do it by the time we published it. And then–we had to go back to school. How were we going to be able to keep doing this and go to school? Plus, it cost a fair amount of money. So we did one issue and had about half of a second issue done and then figured we’d have to put this aside for awhile.

But that was kind of the beginning of it, that plus writing this music column in the high school paper. We were doing all this stuff that related to our love of music. In junior high school, me and my friend Toby started up this psychedelic poster business. We were getting the posters from the Family Dog who were putting on dance concerts at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco and then we’d sell them to the kids at school that wanted them. In high school, we put on dance concerts in the high school auditorium with Michael Bloomfield who we’d gotten to know in Mill Valley. We did psychedelic light shows at the concerts that we put on. We were sort of dabbling. Trying to find where we could fit in with rock and roll. I had some different bands I played in for a second, and Toby was managing bands. It was a lot of experimentation at an early age, trying to figure out what really made sense for us to do. I was also taking tons of photographs, going to rock concerts and shooting photographs of Janis Joplin and the Doors and many others.

Writing about music and taking photographs of the artists ended up becoming my focus. I really liked to write. Then when I went to college at U.C. Santa Cruz, I started writing for the college paper there, The City On A Hill Press, writing reviews. I had also written to Creem magazine while I was still in high school and had gotten a letter back from Lester Bangs, and that was very encouraging. It basically said, “Yeah, send reviews.” I did send some reviews and those didn’t get published. But the fact that I actually got a response at that age! They were receptive. It made me feel that the world of professional magazines wasn’t a closed off thing. That was certainly encouraging.

At that point I think I saw writing about music as an entrée into this world that was mysterious and fascinating, this world of rock and roll artists. I thought this was a way you could enter the world of these artists, hang around, and observe. I was really curious about everything that had to do with rock and roll and the making of rock and roll. The artists, the recording studio, the producers, the managers–everything. As time went on, my idea was to attempt in a story to capture enough of that world so that the reader could have a sense of what it was like meeting with this artist, what they’re about, what they’re doing, their story. I became very focused on that and spent a lot of years doing those kinds of stories.

There was one piece in particular I did on Robbie Robertson for Rolling Stone (it was published when Robbie’s first solo album was released in 1987) that I worked on off and on for a year. I went down and spent time with him a couple different times in L.A. (at various studios), went to Woodstock where he was finishing up his album. I must have hung out with him five different times over the course of a year and talked with Martin Scorsese and all these people who had worked with him over the years. I felt that the piece really gave you a sense of Robbie Robertson and his life. Time passed in the piece. You got a sense of seeing Robbie not just over the course of the year I spent reporting the story, but also I was able to recreate some key scenes from his life that I felt really put you right there with him. I felt it was pretty ambitious.

Anyway, as time went on, I began to think of myself as a writer. I had been writing in a serious way since I was 15. Publishing my own magazine, writing for the high school paper, the college paper, an underground paper called Sundaz! in Santa Cruz. I began to think: this is what I do.

These were the two things that I did: I wrote about music and I took photographs of artists (and other things as well)–lots of photos of musicians. Those were the two things that I got an incredible amount of satisfaction out of. I decided that I was going to spend my life as a writer.

When I ended up in San Francisco as a copy boy at the San Francisco Chronicle in 1974, that turned out to be a very good platform to get a career as a journalist writing about music going. Not only was I able to get pieces published in the Chronicle‘s Sunday entertainment section (the pink “Datebook,” which was seen by one to two million people–a huge audience), but you could write about an artist in the “Datebook,” and that would sell out a club. Probably not any artist, but it almost seemed like that. It seemed like if you wrote about an artist where there was anything at all interesting in their story, enough people would show up. So that was a great thing to be able to do early on. You learned that the words you wrote could have a real impact.

So I was a copy boy at the Chronicle and I went to see this band called the Meters, the New Orleans Band–kind of like the Booker T. & the MG’s of New Orleans (if you look into New Orleans music, you’ll see that they’re quite important). They were out here doing a series of dates–they were opening for the Rolling Stones, but they were also playing at the Boarding House, a great San Francisco club. And I went and saw them a couple of nights because I loved their music. I was taking some photographs and managed to get the card of their manager.

I ended up talking to their manager and got the idea to write a story about them for a magazine that Francis Ford Coppola was publishing called City of San Francisco. And Warren Hinkle was the Editor–he had been the editor of Ramparts when Jann Wenner was there, doing a music column for Ramparts before he started Rolling Stone–and Coppola was the publisher. So I wrote a letter to the Arts Editor of City of San Francisco magazine and pitched them on a story about this band the Meters that was coming back to town. I got Thomas Albright, who was the art critic of the Chronicle, and also Paul Krassner, who was a writer and published The Realist and who I’d gotten to know–I asked them if I could drop their names into this letter and they said it was okay.

So I sent this letter and an article on the Meters that my wife Leslie and I wrote together to this Arts Editor and they published the article. So that was the first piece that I was actually paid for.

After that, we did a piece on Patti Smith and did some other things including a weekly music news column and then City of San Francisco went under. But that was a start, and that was in 1975. So with that under my belt really quickly I was writing stuff every week. At first, Leslie and I were writing together, then separately. But every week we were doing pieces for theBerkeley Barb on Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Ramblin Jack Elliot, the Amazing Rhythm Aces, Jesse Winchester, it just went on and on. Then as time went on, the Talking Heads, the Ramones, Television, Dave Edmunds, the B-52′s. Pretty quickly I had the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Chronicle as two local outlets that I was writing for, and having those regular outlets made it fairly easy to get access to the artists I wanted to write about.

First, you have to get the terrain under control, in the sense that you know where to go to get what you need. So, writing for those places began giving me the access to the artists, and then I started getting this network of people who knew me and knew my writing. Then I started pitching national magazines because I had all these clips I could use to get in the door. Pretty soon, I was writing good stuff for a magazine called New Times which was a glossy magazine that was pretty good; and also for New West, which became California Magazine. Then I did eventually break into Creem and I was also getting stuff published in the New Musical Express, and eventually, Rolling Stone.

This all took a lot of time. It went from 1975 to January of 1984, when I got hired by Rolling Stone–so there was nine years where I was freelancing. For those nine years my focus was to become a staff writer at Rolling Stone–that was my goal.

Of course, RS was changing over this period of time. When I started with that goal, it was a different magazine–a much better magazine–than it was by the time I actually got the job, although I felt the music department was good. But even in 1984, a lot of good journalism was published in Rolling Stone. It’s interesting. I have this book of all the Rolling Stone covers. I looked at the covers published in ’84 and ’85 and ’86 and you know what? They weren’t publishing covers with near-naked stars back then. Even the Madonna cover–she had her clothes on. These days it’s a sad caricature of what it once was. But anyway, I was really proud of the things I wrote for Rolling Stone. I was Music News reporter, so I was doing investigative pieces on ticket scalping and payola. I was able to do a lot of interesting stories during the nine and a half years I worked there. I spent lots of time interviewing sources to put together these investigative stories, which was very satisfying.

Also, in those days you could still get good access to artists. You could sometimes spend several days with artists. Artists would let you come to their homes for an interview. In the early ’70s, before I was working for Rolling Stone I talked to Commander Cody at his place at the beach and hung out while I interviewed him, it was very casual. One time I spoke with George Clinton at a mutual friend’s apartment in San Francisco. I talked to Captain Beefheart at his manager’s apartment. Black Flag let me hang at their office in L. A. and I rode with them in their van from L. A. to Las Vegas one time; they were playing a punk show in Vegas, across the tracks, not where all the bullshit casinos and all are located. I hung out a lot at the recording studio where Rick James was working on albums when I wrote about him. He didn’t care if I saw him snorting coke or getting huge deliveries of pot. Everything got much more controlled later–particularly with the bigger artists, but even with the newer artists. It’s not always the case, but there is a lot of that. And if you’re writing a profile of an artist, you need access. You need to spend time with them so you can witness interesting things happening. You need to be able to talk to people who know the artist, who can tell you good stories and give you their take on what the artist is like.

I think that, these days, a writer can still get good access to indie artists (and I hate to generalize but most of the good artists are indie artists it seems). If a writer treats an artist fairly, it seems like they can get the kind of access they need. If there’s trust, they can get the access and get some amazing things and write some incredible stories. It just depends on what the writer is interested in. If they want to write about the Limp Bizkits of the world, they’re going to have a lot more trouble, and who cares anyway. But if someone wants to write about Cat Power there’s maybe a better chance that they’ll be able to spend some quality time talking with the artist and get something meaningful.

Barbara:   Interviews are actually a pretty difficult way to get a sense of a person. You get a brief glimpse. You’re obviously much more accustomed to it than I am. In these limited periods of contact now, how do you draw people out, or do you still do interviews?

Michael:   I do interviews on occasion now, but I used to do them all day long, for years and years. With artists, with managers, producers, agents–all kinds of different sources. It was years of learning. Journalism is a craft you learn. So much of it is learning the craft, learning these skills. It’s doing hundreds of interviews and learning from each interview what works, what kinds of questions work. How can you bring things out of the artist and help them open up and help them express themselves? You only figure that out by doing it. You learn to ask the “dumb” question. Sometimes you ask questions even though you know the answer because you need to have a quote from the artist. It doesn’t matter that I know the answer because I’ve done enough research. I don’t want to say it, I want the artist to tell me it.

You learn not to bring along a photographer to your interview. I worked with this one photographer where I’d ask a question and before the artist could answer, he’d answer! Having your photographer answering questions instead of the artist does you no good. You have to remember that you’re there to get a great story. You’re there to take in a scene or scenes (and take good notes about what you see) and you’re there to get great quotes from the artist. A lot of people make a big mistake including even some fairly experienced journalists: they’ll do an interview and they’ll talk more than the artist. They think they’re supposed to be having a conversation, and that what they have to say is more important than what the artist has to say–or they’re trying to become friends or something. As a journalist, you’re not there to become friends with the artist. You’re there to get a great story.

You have to structure the interview in a way where you get the artist to open up and tell you some meaningful, real things–not the answers they may have rehearsed. If you interview Tom Waits, what you want is to get Tom Waits to actually talk and tell you something–you want to break through his rap. He’s got his rap–so you want, as a good interviewer, to figure out a good way to get him to drop the persona and to actually tell you something real. He’s a good example of an artist who is incredibly difficult to interview, who has all sorts of stock things that he’ll say over and over if you let him, so the challenge is how do you get through that? How do you get him to somehow stop doing his routine and actually say something real about his music? There’s no easy answer. It becomes intuitive over time, but it only happens over time. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize. That, yeah, you might have to do 100 interviews to get to the point where you’re really starting to be able to do this. That was my experience.

When I did the Rolling Stone interview with rock promoter Bill Graham, I interviewed him 8 hours a day for 2-1/2 days, and he really wanted to tell his story, and I really wanted to hear his story. We were covering years and years of his life–over 25 years of his dealings with legendary musicians, as well as his childhood, which was really unusual. This interview took up eight pages of Rolling Stone magazine, if you can imagine that. It was later republished in a book of interviews they did. I wanted to cover all these things he had done–he had done so much and had been involved with so many artists–I wanted anecdotes about him and the Rolling Stones, him and Bob Dylan, and what happened at Live Aid, what happened with Led Zeppelin, how’d he get started, his childhood. We were covering a lot of ground. The thing was–the only way to do it, it was clear–you had to interview for hours and hours and pull out the gems.

The same thing was true of Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Records. When I talked to him he wasn’t used to doing interviews, he wasn’t the most articulate person. But because we talked for so long I was able to get, in my opinion, really great and interesting things from him. This was the first personal interview he had ever done. He had done interviews where he would talk about his artists. You could get him on the phone for two minutes to talk about Rick James or Stevie Wonder, but he had never done the Berry Gordy, Jr. interview where he had told his story. Those interviews were certainly exciting and interesting to do.

The other thing is doing everything you can to talk to people who know the artist–talk to the producer, talk to the guy at the record company he used to record for, talk to the musicians, talk to their mother, talk to the friends they went to school with. Obviously it depends on the kind of story you’re doing, but a mistake people often make–they’re doing a 700-word story, so they just talk to the artist instead of talking to the artist and at least a few people who know them well. I really think that the reason I got hired by Rolling Stone was because I approached every story I did as a reporting project, the way a good daily newspaper reporter would. So my stories–even my 700 words profiles–had quotes from three or four solid on-the-record sources in addition to the artist I was profiling.

When you talk to all these other people (and hopefully they’re the right people) each of whom have almost lived with the artist, so to speak, they have insights, they can give you context, they can give you perspective so that when you actually talk to the artist you’ve got a picture that’s much more realistic of who they are. You can talk to the artist for an hour and they can tell you anything they want. They can put on a persona. How are you going to know? It may not even be that they’re trying to fool you. That just might be where they are at that minute or that hour. I always found that was really important, talking to a lot of different people.

It seems like it’s been a million years since I worked as a reporter. I mean a lot of other things have happened. I was in the front lines, so to speak, as a music journalist from ’75 until maybe ’94. Really in the trenches. Then, when I started Addicted to Noise, I moved into a different area, even though I kept doing interviews with artists I cared about–I did an interview with Neil Young for ATN, Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Ani DiFranco, different artists that I liked and thought were important. But then I was also dealing with all aspects of running a business, and overseeing the entire project. It’s one thing when your thing is to come up with a story and that’s what you spend all your time doing; it’s another thing when you are the editor and publisher of an entire magazine, not just a monthly magazine. These online magazines, including ATN and Neumu, they’re dailies. A daily “music newspaper” is a whole other thing than Rolling Stone which is published every two weeks, or a monthly magazine. Running a daily online magazine is incredibly intense.

Barbara:    After SonicNet, do you have any words for the wise, life lessons you’ve learned from that experience that you think could help other people out, if only how to avoid those experiences?

Michael:    First of all, a general thing I have to say is I don’t encourage people to pursue music journalism as a career. What I mean by that is that unless you are so obsessed–like “this is my calling in life”–unless that is the feeling that you have and you really know that’s it and there’s nothing else you can see yourself doing, I would not suggest that somebody get into it. I think that’s probably true of journalism in general these days as well. The writing would have to be really rewarding because generally speaking, music journalism is not a great way to make a living, and it’s hard to do it halfway. I was totally obsessed. I decided I was going to write about rock and roll and that was it. That was going to be what I did and nothing was going to stop me. And nothing did.

When I was writing and reporting, it was like around the clock. If a source called you at 11 at night returning your call, you’d turn on your tape recorder and go for it. You’re not going to say it’s 11 o’clock at night and I’m not going to do this interview now. You have to do it full-bore. It’s very intense. It’s your entire life. I mean if you’re going to go for it, you have to go for it. There is no way to get the great stories unless it’s your life.

Back in the ’70s the competition was fierce and it’s only gotten way, way worse. So many people want these jobs with the national magazines. And if somebody would get a daily newspaper music critic job, that would be it. They would be there for the rest of their life. Look around. There are very few full-time jobs, and they don’t open up very often. So, realistically, a person who wants to make music journalism their career has to wonder how they’re going to do it.

The other thing is it’s kind of hard for me to imagine these days how staff writers at many of the outlets can stomach what they have to write about. If you’re a person who actually cares about good music, interesting music, new music–I question how you can make a living being a journalist today and write about the things you actually care about. If you’re at the daily newspaper, you have to write about Limp Bizkit and Britney Spears and Eminem and Linkin Park–all this garbage. I would find that really depressing and frustrating. Also, if you love music, then how can you devote a lot of your time to listening to “bad” music? I only listen to music that I’m “inspired” to listen to. If all I feel like listening to one week is Robert Pete Williams and Lightning Hopkins, that’s all I’ll listen to. I don’t care about Limp Bizkit, and when they release a new album I won’t listen to it unless someone I trust insists that there is really a good reason for me to hear it. I listen to lots of new music, but its music that somehow I’ve gotten the idea that I might like. I’m in record stores a lot and writers tell me about cool stuff they’re into and there are lots of ways to get hip to good stuff without spending many hours listening to bad or mediocre albums. But if you’re paid to cover popular music these days, you’ve got to attend Slipknot and Britney shows and review Staind and System of A Down and Linkin Park and Nickleback. How horrible!

Greg Kot wrote this piece the other day about radio. It has gotten to the point where the only stuff that gets on radio is what major record companies are spending a fortune promoting. Basically, to generalize, the worst music is what actually gets heard. So that’s the stuff that people buy because, even though kids think they’re thinking for themselves and all, it seems like they’re able to be manipulated into buying stuff that’s pretty sub-par. So that’s what’s popular. Publications that pay mostly want to cover the artists that are popular. If you care about all this interesting stuff that’s going on, where are the outlets? Where are you going to get paid to write about it? I’m not optimistic about the state of music journalism today; there’s no place for people to make a living at it.

My experience with SonicNet and Addicted to Noise, basically, most of it was a really good experience. What I mean by that is I started this thing, ATN, in a room in my house, and because of the timing, and because what we were doing was good and the timing was right (late ’94 when most people had not even heard of the Internet), it ballooned really fast. Then I merged it with SonicNet and at that point SonicNet in 1997 was a pretty interesting site with a lot of potential. We got to do a lot of interesting things. I got to build a really great music news editorial department. And a great reviews section. And by the end, just before I quit MTV-owned SonicNet, I had some of the best and best known critics in the world contributing, including Gary Giddins, Simon Reynolds, Dave Marsh, Chet Flippo, and William Gibson, along with lots and lots of newer critics. It was quite an amazing situation.

And the whole thing was an incredible experience. You were waking up every day doing stuff that you felt had never been done before. It was so wide open, the online medium itself was changing it seemed like month to month, and what you could do–it was a total creative rush for a lot of years. It wasn’t until MTV purchased SonicNet in mid-1999 that things started to go downhill. And it took them just about a year to start fucking things up. I stuck around for a year and kind of dealt with it–when it became clear that it was not going the way I wanted it to go, I got out of there.

I didn’t have any control at that point. The prior owner of SonicNet was TCI (the cable company) and they chose to sellSonicNet to MTV Networks and no one was consulting us about that. But until that happened–for five years–it was really exciting. I was out in San Francisco running an office there that I had found. It was the top floor of a warehouse–hardwood floors and skylights–a beautiful arty space that had been built out to my specifications. So basically for a lot of years we had this music journalism thing going on, we were doing daily music news–it was pretty wild.

We did multiple stories on the really far out stuff like the Memphis Goons, stories on what had happened to Dr. Octagon (he vanished for a while but was calling us from parts unknown using his cell phone). As time went on we also did stories on Dave Matthews and all of that commercial stuff. But I think we always brought an intelligence to the stories we ran. We didn’t run stories on Britney’s new outfits, but if millions of people were buying an album, we would put together a new piece that conveyed that info and tried to get at what the phenomenon was all about. We wanted SonicNet to be the place you thought of when you thought “music news.” Whatever was happening in the world of music, we wanted to be there. But the thing was that along with this popular stuff, we were also doing story after story on Captain Beefheart and Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices and Pavement. We wrote about the White Stripes when their first album came out, when no one knew who they were. We wrote about Elliott Smith back in ’95. We interviewed DJ Shadow before he even had his debut album out in the United States. We’d be doing multiple stories on cool artists. Week after week, we’d be doing stories on what was going on with Patti Smith’s new project, or what was going on with Sonic Youth. Because we were daily and we were doing so many stories, we were able to be wide but we were able to be really deep, to go way in depth on a lot of artists we felt were important.

That was a pretty amazing experience, and only the people who were in that office in San Francisco really know what I’m talking about because you had to be there. It was so intense for such a long period of time. Professionally, that was probably the most exciting thing I experienced–and I have to say I think I had a lot of unusual and exciting experiences.

When you combine art with the technology to disseminate information about art all over the world, that’s a pretty powerful thing and a cool thing. When you report something and have it picked up by newspapers and radio stations all over the world, that was amazing. We wrote something about Pearl Jam’s MP3s getting online from an album that hadn’t been released yet, and the next thing we knew it was in the Los Angeles Times! That stuff was happening practically every week.

What did I learn? Well one thing I learned was that if you have a company and you sell it to someone, then you need to know going into it that the likelihood is that it will eventually look nothing like the way it looked like when it was yours. And you have to be able to accept that emotionally, and be able to detach. You have to know that’s what’s really happening; if you think anything else, you’re probably just deluding yourself.

With Neumu–”New-moo” is the way we pronounce it; or that’s how I always thought of it, we don’t really care how people pronounce it–it’s quite a bit different in the sense that one of the founding premises of the site is that this is not about making money. The focus of this is on art. Art that we like. It can be music, it can be film, it can be paintings, photographs, animations, and, of course, writing, but that’s what this is all about. It’s about the art that we care about; and in terms of the writing aspect of it, having as good and real writing as possible about the things that are being covered.

In terms of the album review section, I’m really proud of it. Before Neumu was a site called Insider One, which was up beginning December 2000, and then we moved everything on that site over to Neumu when we put that site up in June 2001. So we basically have 400 album reviews on the site so far.

One of the things I’ve really been pushing the writers to do is get personal, to write about–though you won’t find this with every review–how does this music affect you? How does this music touch you? What is this album about? Don’t just do a consumer guide kind of review–is this album good or bad?–but let’s really dig into this album as much as possible.

Check out this review of The Strokes album Is This It by Jenny Tatone who is based in Portland. I think it’s really powerful.

There was one review that was almost 2000 words that we ran, though most are much shorter, but that review I felt was really good and so I went with it. It’s not that we’re trying to get back to the way that rock criticism was, but more that there are certain periods of times since the ’60s when rock criticism in general was taking more chances and doing more things–particularly in the mainstream publication world–than it currently does. With the Neumu ”44.1 kHz” review section I think we have a place where thoughtful, unpredictable reviews by writers with strong voices run. We have an eclectic group of writers, and they often take an offbeat or idiosyncratic approach.

One of the things I love is finding and working with new writers to help them find their voice and to refine their work. I’m currently working with a number of writers who are still in college who are doing good work.

But certainly the idea with this is to have people come in to the site once a week or come in once a day–whatever they want to do–and read these reviews. I hope that the time they will spend with these reviews will be meaningful to them. That the reviews will give them a sense of whether the albums are something they want to further explore or not–get a hold of to listen to. But even if they don’t want to go hear the music, that the review will provoke something in them, make them think, make them feel something.

Neumu comes out of my own relationship to music and art, which is such an important part of my life. And, speaking for Ms. Stone, I think the same is true. I look on it like a virtual art gallery/magazine/music channel. I always have loved magazines, and with Neumu, Emme Stone and I have created the kind of thing that if others had created it, we’d seek it out. I hope that people who come to Neumu get as much out of it as I do.

Rick Johnson Is Alive and Well and Living in Macomb

By Andrew Lapointe (July 2002)

Former rock critic and Creem magazine writer, Rick Johnson, is alive and well. Many followers of rock criticism have wondered where on earth he’s been hiding all these years and what he’s been up to. Turns out he’s living quietly in Macomb, Illinois, where he manages a newspaper and cigar shop, wakes up at four or five every morning, watches a lot of TV, and still retains a skewed sense of humor that most professional music publications today wouldn’t have a clue what to do with.

Back in the early ’70s, prior to his long-running and highly regarded stint at “America’s Only” you-know-what, Johnson contributed to the likes of Phonograph Record Magazine,Fusion, and the popular men’s magazine, Oui. Still, his offbeat satire and his critical jabs at television, movies, music, and junk culture (in no particular order) truly found a home and a niche at Creem, where many considered him a worthy heir to Lester Bangs. Richard Riegel, in an interview on this site, called Johnson Bangs’s and Meltzer’s “equal as a rock writer, even though his style was very different (more ‘postmodern,’ for whatever that’s worth).” In fact, according to Jim DeRogatis in Let it Blurt [p. 216], Bangs himself singled out Johnson’s pithy review of Lester Bangs and the Delinquents’ Jook Savages on the Brazos as his personal favorite.

After several attempts to contact him at his shop in Macomb, Johnson was generous enough to talk to rockcritics.com, not once, but twice. Many thanks to Richard Riegel for helping us track him down.

Andrew:   I guess before we get into the Creem era, people want to know what you’ve been doing since then.

Rick:   Uhh…well, not that much. I’m the manager of a store where we sell print and tobacco–lots of magazines, and cigars…stuff like that. I’ve been doing that for the last twelve years, and before that just bouncing around. So that sums that all up pretty good, I think. [laughs]

Andrew:   Explain growing up and how you gained an interest in writing about rock music.

Rick:   Well, I was a big music fan from about 1962 onward, when I was introduced to Top 40 radio. I had my ear glued to the radio every year after that. I mean, I was a heavy-duty fan–it was like I was training to be a rock critic or something. I started seeing actual rock magazines with writing in them in the late ’60s and thought, “Hey, I’d like to do that!” And I started working on that kind of stuff, but I didn’t have any success with it until 72′ or 73′.

Andrew:   What other magazines did you write for? Did you write for anything before Creem?

Rick:   Yeah, quite a few, actually. The one that printed the first thing was Fusion out of Boston. And I don’t know, that was in the early ’70s. And the men’s magazine, Oui, I used to write little bits for them, because they paid really good, you could get fifty bucks for ten minutes work. And just a bunch of different music magazines–Phonograph Record Magazine. Oh, I could name a whole bunch of local music things too.

Andrew:   And did you grow up in Illinois?

Rick:   Yeah, I grew up in the Chicago area. I came to Macomb to go to college in 1969, and I’ve been here most of the last thirty years. It’s a pretty neat place to live.

Andrew:   How did you get your start at Creem magazine?

Rick:   Well, I just kept sending them stuff and they weren’t interested in the first several things I sent, but then, finally, I squeezed in…it was a Beach Boys review, I don’t remember what year. I’m thinking around ’74. And then after that, they would, every once in a while, assign me something, although mostly for the next several years I was just writing on spec and sending it in. They printed some of it; they didn’t print some of it.

Andrew:   And what was your relationship like with the staff at Creem, people like Richard Riegel, J. Kordosh, and Robot Hull? Did you work with Lester Bangs at all?

Rick:   Well, only over the phone. He was assigning reviews when I was writing some record reviews, so I talked to him over the phone two or three times, probably in 1975. Occasionally, he’d call me up really late at night ’cause he wanted to talk about world terrorism and I was the only other person besides him that was interested in terrorism. So, we’d have these really long talks about Bader-Meinhof gang and Carlos The Jackal. I was just extremely flattered that he would call me up, ’cause I was, you know, 24 or 25, and he was the Famous Lester Bangs. But after he left Creem, I didn’t really hear from him. People like Riegel and Robot Hull weren’t actually on the staff, they were just contributors. I’ve known Riegel since the early ’80s. We got to be friends, and we write and talk and stuff like that, and [the Riegels] have visited a couple times. I saw them in Detroit. Robot Hull I’ve only talked to on the phone, I didn’t really know him, but he said he liked something that I wrote in 1976 on the back of an envelope [laughs]. So I thought that was great.

Andrew:   Did all these people leave the business altogether or did they just go to other places? What about some of the editors?

Rick:   Uhh, Sue Whitall went to the Detroit News, where I think she still writes for them today and has written some books and stuff like that. Dave DiMartino left to be something like West Coast Bureau Chief for Billboard magazine, and I think now he’s the editor of an internet only magazine called Launch–I’ve been told this, I’ve never seen it, though. Let’s see, Bill Holdship, who was a really great guy who would never hurt anybody’s feelings–he went to California when Creemmoved out there for about a year after they were sold. He left to work for another music publication. That’s pretty much all the editors I worked with there.

Andrew:   How do you think Creem was different when you worked there as opposed to the ’70s when it started?

Rick:   Well, in the ’70s, the editors still controlled the magazine. It was a huge difference. But as time went by, the editors had increasingly less to say about the magazine, while the publisher and advertising people and sometimes the art department started saying, “Well, the magazine is going to be this other thing instead.” The editors just gave up after a while, the writers started fading away, they’d go to other magazines and stuff because they didn’t want to try to fit into this goofy new Creem they were trying to come up with.

Andrew:   And what about your style of writing? Do you think that your humorous and quirky style of writing would have been readily accepted at any other magazine besides Creem?

Rick:   No! [laughs] That’s why, after Creem, I hardly did anything, ’cause the way I wrote–boy! It was not commercial, and believe me, nobody wanted it. But for me, what was so great about writing for Creem was that they let me do anything, absolutely anything. So, I had tons of fun writing like that. And it’s a good feeling to know that, you know, no matter how insane and off the wall the stuff you write is, these guys might actually publish it!

Andrew:    Describe your writing. Where did you get that kind of humorous style and all those ideas?

Rick:   Well, the main place I copied my writing style from was Catcher In The Rye. You read that?

Andrew:   No.

Rick:   It’s J.D. Salinger.

Andrew:   Yes.

Rick:   Most American kids read it in high school.

Andrew:   Yeah, it’s in our curriculum in high school.

Rick:   Oh is it? Yeah. And so as soon as I read that, I adopted that first person kind of style in high school in the ’60s.

Andrew:   And there’s also all kinds of swearing and language in that book too.

Rick:   Lots of strange stuff.

Andrew:   Yeah, yeah.

Rick:   And then, I read all the early rock magazines like Crawdaddy!, Mojo-Navigator, the early Rolling Stone, and so that had a certain amount of influence on me, especially Crawdaddy! because that’s where Richard Meltzer wrote, and he’s kind of my hero.

Andrew:   And reading all these rock magazines–was this when you were, say, as young as me, like sixteen?

Rick:   Yeah, that’s about the right age. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

Andrew:   ’Cause that goes as far back, I guess, as ’66, when rock writing started to take off.

Rick:   Before that, a couple of the teen magazines got started that way too. Hit Parader, which I guess is still publishing and pretty successful, they started doing some serious writing about that time, and I don’t know, there was one called Teen Set, that did the same and a couple others but they came later. Those were the earliest serious rock [writing] things in America.

“Many pop sociologists and complete idiots alike think that the ’80s are going to be a chromium whazoo, mainly because that’s when 1984 will occur. Where would they be if George Orwell had entitled his book Rats Nibbled My Eyeballs instead?”
–Rick Johnson, “Mikey & Oinky, Breens & Beepers: What the ’80s Will Really Be Like,” Creem, January 1980

Rick:   Well, I just thought they were funny subjects that I could write really good stuff about. And so I would call up–for most of this stuff–Sue Whitall, and it seemed like no matter what strange idea I’d have, she’d go, “Yeah! Sure.” Like, you know, a review on junk food, she’d say, “Yeah! Sure.” I loved to write about TV, so I did a lot of that, anything I saw on TV that I thought I could sell to Creem, I would, you know, immediately start taking notes and give Sue a call.

Andrew:   There’s also board game reviews.

Rick:   Board games reviews, yeah.

Andrew:   And I have a really hilarious review that you did for a movie that came out in 1980 called Little Darlings.

Rick:   Oh yeah! [laughs]

Andrew:   I came across that movie really late on TV; I guess it’s kind of a teen flick.

Rick:   Yeah, yeah it is.

Andrew:   And it’s just really funny the way you reviewed it. ["The story involves a contest between the potty-mouthed, chain-smoking Angel (Kristy McNichol) and the frankly Tatumlike rich kid, Ferris (Tatum O'Neal), to see who can lose their virginity first. The prize: a date with Ranger Rick? No such luck--the winner gets a certificate from director Ronald Maxwell that says she never has to be in a movie like this again."]

Rick:   Well, I wanted to see the actresses nude! You know? That’s why I went to the movie, and I was extremely disappointed when that didn’t happen.

Andrew:   Well, a lot of movies are made for that so…

Rick:   Yeah, but I mean, I wanted to see Kristy McNichol nude, so, I was very disappointed. And I ate so much candy that I started falling asleep towards the end. It was an interesting night altogether.

Andrew:   Did you review a lot of movies, or was that left to someone else?

Rick:   Oh man, only a couple of theatrical ones, and maybe a few TV movies like the KISS movie, Beatles made-for-TV movies, things like that.

Andrew:   I also have a review here of The Richard Simmons Show and his book Never Say Diet.

Rick:   Yeah. [laughs] I mean you only have to watch that show once and you know it’s something you want to write about. It’s just so full of things you can make fun of that, you know, who can resist? You can say that about most TV shows anyway.

Andrew:   Was TV a lot quirkier in the ’80s, and a lot easier to make fun of, than something today?

Rick:   Well, that’s the way I was thinking. It seemed all the rock magazines were starting to become like corporate magazines, and still are. But some of these “for young men” magazines they have now, like Stuff and Maxim, I’ve seen writing in those that remind me of the Creem writing–pretty off the wall and profane. They’re almost having a revival [of that style] in those “for young men” mags. There’s a lot of Maxim up at my store, that’s where I get a chance to look at those. I have a lot of college students as clientele, so that goes right up.

Andrew:   Do you still keep up with rock and pop culture today, since you work at a magazine shop?

Rick:   Well, yeah, invariably I do. I watch a lot of television, so that’s the main way; I’m in touch with that stuff. But yeah, having hundreds of newspapers and magazines to look at all the time, it’s a big help.

Andrew:   What kinds of things do you watch and read today?

Rick:   Well, on TV I like the non-fiction stuff like the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, stuff like that. And then I watch stuff like reruns of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Anything with attractive young women in it, I’ll definitely check out. I was watching the Disney Channel quite a bit for a long time. And…Oh boy, not much in the way of network TV or sitcoms. True crime stuff–there’s a lot of that stuff on TV right now, on A&E and The Learning Channel, all kinds of those. I watch a lot of the crime shows. That’s the kind of stuff I read now, true crime, and I don’t really read any rock music magazines now.

Andrew:   What led you to get out of writing about rock music? Was it because Creem ended? What did you do after that?

Rick:   Well, after Creem folded, that and this other magazine I was writing for–it started out being called Rock Video, and then it ended up being called Hard Rock–I was writing for both of those, and they both went out of business within a few weeks of each other, so I kept sending a few things out to different people I thought would like them, but there was just no response at all. So I eventually started working on other things, I had a mail order business for quite a while, and even worked in a record store–you know, just stuff to make money. I’d sure like to write stuff now, but no one is exactly flocking to my door saying, “Oh Rick, Rick, please write stuff for us and we’ll give you money.”

Andrew:   Do you still listen to music today?

Rick:   Yeah, but I listen mainly to music from the ’60s. I’m really big on ’60s pop and soul. So, music between ’62 and ’67, really, is the main thing I listen to. There’s so much of it out of there, and there’s so much unreleased stuff they keep coming out with on CD, that there’s just an endless supply of “new” music, so I have a lot of fun with the ’60s stuff.

Andrew:   Were you ever concerned with your writing being controversial? Like, you did a review for a record by a group called The Runaways.

Rick:   Oh yeah.

Andrew:   And you completely smashed them. Like, “How do I hate The Runaways, let me count the ways.”

Rick:   ”Let me count the ways.” Yeah.

Andrew:   Saying “These bitches suck” and all this stuff. Did you ever get flack for the kind of things that you wrote?

Rick:   Well, actually very little, except in the “Letters” column. I don’t know, somebody yelled at me in a bar once for giving Crosby, Still & Nash a bad review, but not much in person. Some of that stuff, like that Runaways one…God! Total pig writing, not “politically correct” I think is the term, and I have to admit some of those things embarrass me a little bit ’cause some of them sound so anti-female, but, you know, I was just a young lad going through one of those phases. What can I say?

Andrew:   Do you have any interesting stories to share from working at Creem? Like interacting with the people there when you were writing in the day?

Rick:   Hmmm…they had all the editors in one room, that was me and Dave and Bill and an editorial assistant. So there was a lot of interplay in that office, of course. I was the only one who did much writing at the office; Dave and Bill would usually go home and do it. I think ’83 and 84′ were the years. As far as writing goes, I don’t think you’d use the word “interplay,” no.

Andrew:   Because I read Let It Blurt, the Lester Bangs story.

Rick:   Yeah, I wished I’d read that whole thing; I just sort of skimmed it.

Andrew:   This is earlier years I’m talking about, I guess, but it seemed like there was a lot of interaction between everyone, and there were a lot of crazy stories.

Rick:   Yeah, yeah. It was really wild and crazy. But unfortunately I had missed out on that era. [laughs] When I got up there, the crazy days were really pretty much over. We were often described as the most boring group of editors Creem magazine ever had.

Andrew:   But did the writing change at all?

Rick:   Well, you can see it getting more…well, I don’t know what word to use…less completely insane as time goes by–there was a lot less of totally making fun of everything and a lot more taking things seriously. Not nearly as much fun, I think. So, I’m very low on stories, I really am. People would call at Creem when I worked up there, that was kind of fun. They expected us all to be really mean and hateful, but they’d find out that we were just regular people and we’d get a really, really big kick out of hate mail–you know how writers love hate mail.

Andrew:   My friend has a little independent film group with a website up and he’s gotten a few hateful e-mails, really mean things, and what he’d do is write back and be really sarcastic.

Rick:   Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Andrew:   He’d be like, you know, “You really need help.” “Calm down,” you know, “see a therapist” and all that stuff, and it’s quite hilarious.

Rick:   Yeah, at Creem I got to be the “Letters” columnist for about year and that was a riot. I would write back to some of the people and we would call each other. It was funny–to get to see all those letters in their original form was great. Most people had amazing ways of using the language that a professional writer wouldn’t even think of and that was a lot of fun. But the corporate interest didn’t like my column, so I got kicked off.

“The one item I’m most curious about though is Twenty Ugly Lifelike Creatures for only $1.69. Sounds like a real bargain, but what I want to know is how they can fit Nick Lowe, Tom Petty, the Stones Devo, Bob Welch, the B-52′s, and ZZ Top into one tiny package?”
–Rick Johnson, “Fun, Fun, Fun (‘Til Daddy Takes the Motorized Shark Fin Away!),” Creem, May 1980

Rick:   Well, they folded twice and both times when people had written things, they weren’t getting paid for it. I think I’m the only one, even though I had material in both folded magazines, I managed to get paid for every one. I had a feeling I was the only one–I thought that was kind of funny. I bailed out towards the end and I didn’t do anything for them in the last six months or so they were in existence and I thought that was a laugh riot.

Andrew:   Do you still want to write things like this today?

Rick:   Oh yeah, I’d love to write about TV and stuff like that. That would be a lot of fun, ’cause I watch a lot of TV. I don’t know if I have any commercial potential these days, though, I really don’t. Maybe I’ll get all kinds of cards and letters now saying, “Hey Rick! We will give you money! Call us up now!”

Andrew:   There’s like a community of rock critic fans on this site–one person said he wanted to see a Rick Johnson interview, so that’s one of the reasons I got assigned to do it. And in the interview with–it might be Richard Riegel or John Mendelssohn, he says something like, “What the hell happened to Rick Johnson?”

Rick:   [laughs]

Andrew:   ”Where did he go?” A lot of people think you’re a recluse, living up in the hills or something.

Rick:   Oh, no such luck. I’m in retail, man, that’s much worse…But I didn’t go anywhere. Nobody wanted to print my writing, so that’s the reason.

Andrew:   Well, that’s too bad because it was really different, original, and a lot of fun, and there’s not a lot of writing like that, it’s really good stuff.

Rick:   Oh really?

Andrew:   When I’m reading your stuff, I sometimes get lost.

Rick:   Yeah, me too!

Andrew:   Like, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Rick:   Yeah. I would do anything to get a good line into the piece.

Andrew:   Yeah.

Rick:   You can tell that after a while, like how desperate is this guy to get that one stupid line in there? You know? Like just write a whole big long paragraph about all kinds of unknown things just to get the phrase “Rodeo Blooper Tape” in there somewhere. That sums up a lot of that stuff actually.

Andrew:   Are there any pieces that you did for Creem that you’re particularly fond of that you can remember?

Rick:   Well, yeah, that’s an easy one. My favorite was an article was about Loverboy–that would have been 83′ or ’84.

Andrew:   A Canadian band.

Rick:   Yeah, yeah, a Canadian band. It was one where, when I was testing my tape recorder in the office, I was going like, “Testing, testing, testes…”, and then I said “HOG BALLS” and that all went on the tape. Okay, and on the interview when it was time to turn the tape on, instead of pressing record, I pressed play and heard my voice go “HOG BALLS!” Now, I don’t think anybody noticed besides me, but it was unnerving. In the article I lied and said it was real loud. I shouldn’t have done that; it’s just that it wasn’t funny without it. And “The Secret History Of Queen”–that was one where I was able to write all kinds of crazy stuff, just crazy, crazy nonsense. That’s one I always remember. And the things I wrote about junk food I was real fond of, those came out pretty good, there’s two of those. After that, I don’t know, maybe one other thing called “I Call On Hoot ‘n’ Annie” about a local hippie party…

Andrew:   Yeah, I have that one.

Rick:   Do you? That’s one I really like. When I look at it now, it’s got some major problems, but it’s still got a lot of good stuff.

Andrew:   Creem magazine, in many ways, was very “un-’60s”–unlike, Rolling Stone, which had a real ’60s sensibility. Did you write knowingly from that perspective from a position of irreverence for the values and music of the ’60s?

Rick:   Yeah, because I read Creem for two or three years before I wrote anything. And especially in the beginning, I was trying to copy the Creem style, trying to make it look like Lester Bangs or somebody else. So, that was pretty calculated. And finally, Lester said, “You know, you’d be better off if you’d stop trying to imitate our style and do your own.” So I said, “Hey! If he’s telling me that, then that must be a good idea.” So, I stopped imitating and started trying to go down my own sick path.

Andrew:   What do you think Lester thought about everyone copying his style and emulating him?

Rick:   I don’t know. He had a pretty big ego, but he did not strike me as any kind of a show off, at all. I know he was really nice to certain people like, Jim DeRogatis, the Sun-Times guy…

[I pause the recording, so Rick can sell some cigars.]

Rick:   Yeah, he was extremely helpful to DeRogatis, even though he was just in high school at the time. Have you talked to DeRogatis?

Andrew:   Yeah, I’ve spoken to him several times.

Rick:   Oh, okay. Yeah, like I said, he said, “Don’t try and imitate this style, do your own thing.”

Andrew:   Well, was he the one who got you on board at Creem? Or was there someone else?

Rick:   I just started sending stuff, just dropping it in the mail, ’cause I liked it so much when I first started reading it and…oh boy, Lester was the Record Reviews Editor then, so I dealt with him on some record reviews. I’m trying to remember who the editors were then…oh god, I can’t remember. Oh, one was named Gary something, I think, and oh, Wayne Robins…

Andrew:   Gary Kenton. I think it’s Gary Kenton you’re thinking of.

Rick:   Gary Kenton. That sounds right, with a “k”. But I didn’t really work with anybody, I was just sending stuff in like another person throwing stuff in the mail. It was two or three years later that I was able to be in their study. And I only worked with Lester for less than a year, right at the end of his Creem visit. So, Sue Whitall was the editor I worked with the most, she’s the one who really brought me on.

Andrew:   What’s your impression of writers who aren’t as associated with Creem, like Greil Marcus and [Robert] Christgau?

Rick:   Well, I really like both of them. I’ve been reading Greil Marcus forever, like all the way back to the ’60s, and he wrote a couple of really good articles forCreem that had a great influence on me. One was called “Rock-a-hula”–they had these really silly titles, but they talked about how rock ‘n’ roll is fun, and to not take this stuff too seriously. It would make some serious points occasionally, just don’t get carried away with that stuff. [Remembering the exact title] That’s “Rock-a-hula Clarified.” Yeah, that was a great story. And Christgau…I don’t know, I really enjoyed his stuff, too. I didn’t agree with a lot of things that he said, but he was very consistent, so when I would be reading his reviews I would know what he was saying anyway. There were a lot of writers–like me, for example–they would change from month to month; he was very consistent and just really good at putting things into words. I admire his language skills a lot.

Andrew:   You also mentioned Richard Meltzer as being an idol. What was it about his writing that you liked a lot?

Rick:   The idea that I got from him was that you don’t take anything seriously and you make fun of everything, including the stuff that you really, really like. Once I adopted that point of view, that changed everything. So, that was very crucial for me. And when I was teenager, I had read all his stuff in the old Crawdaddy!magazines, and it was really kind of intellectual and stuff, but then he changed dramatically. His humor is great; I think he’s one of the finest rock writers ever.

Andrew:   Have you ever met him?

Rick:   No, never talked to him or anything.

Andrew:   Who else influenced you?

Rick:   Well, Lester Bangs of course. I was a blatant imitation of him my first couple of years. But…boy a lot of people and stuff, say Mad Magazine, too–oh god…the rock magazines that were popular then like the old Hit Parader, and I’m sure I mentioned Catcher In the Rye. But let’s see, besides Lester and Meltzer, a lot of John Mendelssohn. Oh, you know something that I talked about with Lester once was a couple of influences that we shared which were Beatnik writers like Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders. Those were other big influences on me. See, I was already writing in a style not totally dissimilar from Lester’s before I was even published. And he and I had these same influences, so that affected us both in the same way to churn out these three and four word phrases that just bounce off each other and try to stand alone without punctuation. That’s what Lester in particular got from Ginsberg. But boy, if I were to sit down and really think about it, I think I could name about 20 influences.

Andrew:   There’s a great quote about you from Richard Riegel in his rockcritics.com interview.

Rick:   Oh really? Can you tell me?

Andrew:   Roughly, he’s saying you were kind of equal to Lester and Meltzer.

Rick:   Oh, no way! [laughs] We’re pretty good friends, I think that would explain that. No, I would never compare myself to either one of them. They were the masters.

Andrew:   It think it was something like, you should be writing TV commercials today.

Rick:   [laughs]

Andrew:   Because, he was watching a TV commercial and it had the slogan, “When Dentures Dream”…

Rick:   Yeah–he put that in one of his letters!

Andrew:   And he thought, man, that’s a concept not unlike one of yours.

Rick:   Yeah, you know, I wished I had gotten into something like that many, many years ago. I’m extremely rusty now. I don’t think I could write that way, I don’t think I could produce too much material that would be worthwhile for something like that.

Andrew:   But would you see yourself as a writer of commercials and infomercials and stuff like that?

Rick:   Well, actually I’m influenced by commercials. I’m somebody who has the TV on all the time, even if I’m not watching it. And things are just constantly jumping off the TV to me, just you know, POW! I have to run and write them down, I got a billions of post-its with quotes from TV commercials, like the Tums commercial, “Something Your Body Needs Anyway.” That is just so heavy, I could hardly describe it. There’s a new one…what is it?…it’s a credit card that pays you money when you spend at certain stores and the phrase is, “Get Paid For The Stuff You Buy Anyway.” That’s another one I just loved. I wish I could have gone into something like that, ’cause I think there was a time when I could have been good at that. I’m afraid the time has passed.

Andrew:   At the store you run, do you have regular customers that know you and know about your writing?

Rick:   Oh yeah. This is a pretty small town and you invariably get to know lots and lots of people by working here. I work behind the counter here five days a week. I’ve gotten to where I know everybody in Macomb.

Andrew:   You’ve lived in Macomb since the ’60s?

Rick:   Since 1969, I’ve only missed three years. There was the two years in Detroit and one year where I lived in another local town. So, that’s most of the last 32 years. It’s a funny kind of college town, where the college doesn’t really dominate that much. So, you have the university types on one side and the locals–I don’t know what to call them, I’m a local now too–on the other. And it’s a funny place, everyone gets along real well. Unfortunately, no one goes to summer school, so at this time of year, I don’t make any money at all.

Andrew:   Who are your customers, demographically speaking? Do you get a lot of young kids in or older people?

Rick:   It really varies from, mainly I would say, from college age up through the elderly. We sell a lot of porno, so that brings in the younger ones–the college kids. We sell a lot of newspapers, so I’ve gotten to know people that are 70 and 80 years old and they’re really wonderful to talk to, real interesting people.

“The big whitehead’s blatant manipulation of the studio herd is as patronizing as it is boring. On one recent show (hot topic: should agrisexuals be allowed near the winter wheat?), [Donahue] asked his victim, ‘Why is it alright for pigs to sleep with their parents, and not humans?’”
–Rick Johnson, Review of Donahue: My Story, Creem, 1980

Answers From the Dean: Online Exchange with Robert Christgau (August 2002)

The second in our hopefully continuing series of online exchanges features Village Voice Senior Editor, Robert Christgau. Thanks to all the readers who sent in questions, to Tom Sawyer for invaluable editorial assistance, and of course to Robert Christgau for answering an astounding number of reader queries (I stopped counting somewhere around 75). On that note, there were, not surprisingly, some identical or very-closely-related questions from different readers. Some of these are answered once and left at that, while a handful of list-oriented questions are dealt with as a special “bonus answer” at the end of this feature.

Pictures of Robert Christgau by Carola Dibbell.

> >From: Steven Rubio
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 8:59 AM

robertchristgau.com is a terrific resource, and the Consumer Guide lends itself perfectly to such an easily-searchable presentation. But the site is also an attempt to gather together pretty much every word in the published history of Bob Christgau, as if Pauline Kael, confronted with the need to pare down her life’s work into the 1,300 pages of For Keeps, said “fuck it, just reprint every book I ever published.” How much input does the Dean have into what goes into the web site? To the extent it represents a desire to get everything in one place, is there a conscious philosophy behind the web site, or does it “just happen?”

The robertchristgau.com web site is a co-operative project between myself and my dear old friend Tom Hull, who I met shortly after he queried me as Voice music editor from St. Louis in 1975. Not to put too fine a point on it, Tom is a computer genius as well as an excellent and very knowledgeable music critic, but he’d never done much web site work. The design of the web site, especially its high searchability and small interest in graphics, are his idea of what a useful music site should be, but I concur with them completely–I’m a text kind of guy. Tom is also very involved in Linux and various free software ideas, which I also concur with, but much less knowledgeably and not without a few reservations. I’ve never been a cyberspace utopian–have my doubts as to the morality and economic good sense of unlimited musical file-sharing, for instance–and since I make my living mostly as a writer, I worry a little about making all my stuff available for free. What does it do to my prospects of publishing another CG book, for instance, or future essay collections? Nevertheless, on balance I’m for it.

The site was set up shortly after September 11, when Tom got stuck here visiting New York from Wichita, where he lives. During the fall, I whiled away insomniac nights preparing old Voice pieces for uploading, but this year, between Pazz & Jop and a couple of big outside essay projects and then a month of hand and hernia surgeries in May, I haven’t worked on it much. So I was surprised to see how much old CG material had gone up. How did it get there? I wondered. The answer is that Tom and a small cybercoterie of devoted fans had inputted it by hand (with a fair number of typos, by the way). To be honest, I was honored and touched by this. But if the project was mine alone, I doubt I would have put some of the old material up, especially non-CG. The Playboy columns (which are as I wrote them, not as Playboy ran them) are rarely too deep, and much of the early CG material was rewritten for the book for a reason–I didn’t evolve my current high-density stylistic approach until 1975 or so. On the other hand, I’m happy to have my old book reviews up, as well as “Rock & Roll &” columns that didn’t make the Harvard collection, which is not to say I think every damn one is an utter keeper–I’m proud of the uniformly high quality of my writing, and never slough anything off, but at the end of the day, some pieces always come off better than others. One thing about cyperspace, however, is that selectivity really doesn’t make economic sense there, especially when searchability is an option. In a cardboard-and-paper compendium, that’s not how things would work. Make me a decent offer and I’ll select and edit away.

I just read my friend Ann Powers’s As I Get Old, and it hit very close to home. I’m 49, about midway in age between Ann and yourself, and I’m very interested in what you thought of her piece, and if you see yourself not only as a mentor to those who work with you but also as a role model for readers. I’ve always relied on rock critics to help me wend my way through the pop culture jungle (being a Berkeley guy, Marcus has been my primary guide, but he’s not the only one), but what Ann’s essay showed me was how writers like yourself have helped me understand how to get past being a teenager when it comes to pop music. As a teacher, I find “role model” to be a pretty oppressive job description, but here I am, pushing it onto someone I’ve never even met. (And I enjoy the irony that it took Ann, some years my junior, to explain to me what age means in this context.)

I’m not just flattered by Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, I’m impressed–a lot of writers pushing the envelope and writing at the top of their game. Ann’s piece showcases her strengths, which I think made her the best rock critic working during most of her Times tenure: range, thoughtfulness, and enormous heart, plus an ability to relate her personal experience to what she’s writing about without just rattling on cleverly about her life, as too often happens in autobiographical criticism that assumes way too much about how interesting the reader finds the writer. And she’s come through (and is still undergoing) personal health crises that as her good friend I care about a lot. Nevertheless, I will point out that she’s in the age range that’s always seemed to me the worst for this particular rock and roll question, 35-40, which is really when your physical mortality and loss of youthfulness tends to impinge on you–a crisis that’s much worse for the generations after mine, because they’ve been able to observe the various grotesqueries that too often ensue when aging rock and rollers try to pretend to be something they’re not.

I recently did a phoner with some radio ham who was just old enough to be pleased that the Stones were touring again (which I’m not) and wanted me to tell him that 60 wasn’t old. I laughed in his earpiece. It is old, three quarters or two thirds of most people’s effective lives if not much more (two of my best friends died at 65 and 60), and Jagger hasn’t handled it very well. But Dylan and Lou Reed and many others have, brilliantly if not always consistently. And so have some critics, myself included–it’s easier for us, of course, because criticism requires second-level creativity while making music is first-level. I hope Ann keeps writing about all kinds of music. For somebody with her spiritual wherewithal, it’s just a matter of wanting to do it, and she’ll do it in some kind of original way for sure.

As for being a role model, nobody with a public identity however modest has any choice. It’s part of the job; there’s no way to rid yourself of it. Does that mean fans should fuck teenagers on tape like R. Kelly or for that matter go to an ashram like Leonard Cohen? I hope not. But Kelly and Cohen are kidding themselves if they don’t think they’re putting the idea in people’s heads.

> >From: Charles Bromley
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 11:45 AM

You’ve said the Rolling Stones used to be your favorite band, but they aren’t anymore. Why did you lower your opinion of them, and where would you rank them now?

I still like the Stones a lot as a band, but as individuals, compared to such contemporaries as Dylan or Reed or Young, I find both Jagger and Richards–especially Jagger, of course, although Keith’s blood changes are an exercise of economic privilege every bit as dislikable as Mick’s posturing–harder and harder to suspend disbelief over. I can no longer go to the work and avoid what I know of the man. And this calls the realism I once prized in their work into question. I played Sticky Fingers not long ago and my wife said she couldn’t hear them anymore without snickering a little (that’s not how she put it, she’s no snickerer, but they just don’t mean much to her now). I enjoyed Sticky Fingers a lot myself. But its power was certainly diminished.

> >From: John Monger
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 12:02 PM

When it came up, what did you think of your fellow rock scribes jumping on stage and performing (say, John Mendelssohn or Patti Smith)? Ever get the urge yourself?

Christopher Milk was a bad band, but many other critics, notably Chrissie Hynde and Lenny Kaye (did Neil Tennant actually write criticism? if so, him too), have been in good ones. I don’t think of Patti as a critic myself, just a creative person with some Creem bylines, but I obviously approved. In alt-land these days that kind of crossover happens all the time, but most of the critics involved are of small consequence, ditto the bands. I never saw that Marcus-Marsh-King thing and suspect I would have been embarrassed if I did. Me, I don’t want to play–I wanna have a radio show, for money. Although I did have some dreams about leading a successful band as a hobby five years or so ago. I also have dreams that I can stride 20 or 30 feet at a time.

> >From: Nigel Bartlett
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 12:52 PM

When the 2000 Pazz & Jop poll results came out in the Voice, they were quickly blasted by Mike Doughty from Soul Coughing in the New York Press for attempting to critically “quantify” music.

I have two questions: What are your thoughts on Doughty and his diatribe against music criticism in general and Pazz & Jop in particular? And do you feel that the Pazz & Jop poll is a valid indicator of critical appeal, popular appeal, musical success, or any other factor(s)?

I don’t expect artists to like or understand my criticism, although it happens–nobody likes to be judged, and making music and writing criticism are radically different creative endeavors. The anti-quantification argument typifies the difference. I believe in quantification, obviously–as one useful method among many. Specifically, I believe it is an essential component of democracy–all electoral systems quantify value. Pazz & Jop is based on a notion of consensus that capital in its nasty rationalizing way is doing its darnedest to render obsolete, and is therefore not as useful as it used to be. What it measures, obviously, is critical appeal. When a lot of people who hear a lot of records agree on one, that means something. A lot of records have surfaced in Pazz & Jop and gone on to gradually accrue various kinds of status, including sales–most recently in the case of Moby’s Play, which won the poll long before it broke.

> >From: Steven Ward
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 1:47 PM

Many critics have admitted giving a particular band or album a critical thrashing, but later changing his or her mind. Any albums out there that you love now but dissed back then when first released?

If I change my mind much, it’s in the other direction. The whole point of the Consumer Guide method, which theVoice lets me get away with and most timeliness-obsessed mags wouldn’t, is that I don’t write about something until I know what I think, and one of my biggest skills as a critic (which took years to learn) is that I know when I know what I think. So while it happens occasionally that I’ll overrate something, get entranced and then tire of the tricks over the space of a year or a decade, it almost never happens that I underrate something (as opposed to missing something and then catching up later). In the ’90s, the only big example I could find was the second Shania Twain album, the 1995 pop breakthrough The Woman in Me. Too bad, my pan was pretty convincing.

Many former and present Voice writers who have been interviewed at rockcritics.com cite your editing style. Something done line by line and word and word. They say you can smell bullshit a mile away and that you always make their copy better while retaining the writer’s spirit and intention. My question is, who did you learn the skill of editing from; or, who was your Robert Christgau?

If I had a Robert Christgau, it was Ellen Willis, but then, if she had an Ellen Willis, it was Robert Christgau. When we lived together 1966-69, we edited each other more stringently than any of the pros we worked with, many of whom were pretty good (I especially recall Don Erickson at Esquire). We just worked harder at it (and interfered more) than the pros did. It’s really not such a mystery–certainly Tom Carson and Kit Rachlis, to name a couple who say they learned it from me, are as good at it as I am. You just have to care a lot, and really want the writer to say what the writer wants to say, which for many writer-editors is psychologically impossible. I’d also like to mention the wonderful man who edited my first book in 1972, Harris Dienstfrey. A very good line editor who taught me a lot. One other thing I should mention–I’m not a spewing kind of writer myself, like Lester or early Meltzer or even Greil Marcus sometimes (he told me he wrote the introduction to the Stranded reprint, a brilliant piece of writing, in…was it 40 minutes? or 25?). I edit myself, painfully and continually. Obviously that helps me edit others.

> >From: Scott Woods
> >Date: Monday, July 01, 2002 6:27 PM

A few years ago, Rock & Rap Confidential started their own International Music Writers Poll. Though I think their version is incredibly ill-conceived, the one interesting thing they’ve tried to do is give their poll more of an international reach, with voters coming in from as far and wide as Argentina, Hong Kong, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, et al. I note, however, that Pazz & Jop itself has recently extended ballots to critics in such exotic locales as Australia, Britain, and Canada. How is it decided who gets a ballot? And do you see Pazz & Jop opening up its geographical borders to any greater degree in the future, or do you want it to retain a uniquely “American” flavor? (And does the fact that the Voice garners new readers on the Internet affect your thoughts on this at all?)

The thing with Pazz & Jop is–it has to stop somewhere, and the U.S. of A. is a reasonable demarcation point. Since the dream of consensus continues to haunt the democrat in me (which is a pretty deep part of me), the idea that everyone can in theory share the same frame of reference (while obviously deteriorating ever since I wrote my first Voice column in 1969 and by now an utter chimera in a time when nobody’s on all the mailing lists or could listen to everything that came in the mail if s/he was) is one I’d like to leave open theoretically. The only way the Internet changes this is that it’s easier for critics to work in America from overseas. I think that’s how thatAustralian guy got in there. My rule is, once we invite you, however mistakenly, we can’t disinvite you (and also his comments were pretty good). Canada’s a different story–I’ve always made a few exceptions for Canada. It’s at least as American as Berkeley (not to mention Manhattan), don’t you think?

It’s safe to say that no other rock critic has ever covered as wide a range of music as you have. In terms of genres or significant artists, what–if any–do you think are your blind spots as a music critic?

First of all, I don’t think I cover more kinds of music than any other critic. I think I’m remarkably enthusiastic and knowledgeable about African music and that confuses people. Jon Pareles and Chuck Eddy, to cite just two colleagues who jump to mind, have as broad a range as I do. As for my limitations, they’re public and they’re legion. Metal, art-rock, bluegrass, gospel, Irish folk, fusion jazz (arghh)–all prejudices I’m prepared to defend and in most cases already have, but prejudices nevertheless. I pretty much lost reggae with dancehall; my acquaintance with most techno is a nodding one (zzzz); I’ve never really liked salsa even though Puerto Rico is one of my favorite places on earth and my daughter loves salsa and my niece and nephew run a fucking music club in San Juan. (Admittedly, all my rels share my fondness for older Cuban-influenced styles.) Mostly the salsa thing is a matter of brass tuttis–I’ve never liked most ’30s jazz because I don’t like tuttis. I also don’t like flutes or vibraphones most of the time. As I said, I’m prepared to argue these prejudices–even the tuttis. I oppose shows of virtuosity and undisciplined outpourings of self-regarding emotion on deeply held aesthetic grounds. But since I’m always ready to make specific exceptions to any such generalization, it would certainly be fair to argue that in all the above styles I’m not ready enough.

Oh yeah–classical music. Did I mention classical music?

> >From: Cachay Alegre Raul
> >Date: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 5:40 PM

Rock music is now a powerful way of expression for thousands and thousands of poor and angry young nonconformists in Latin American countries like mine, Peru. Do you think that, maybe, only maybe, the true, revolutionary spirit of rock music subsists in those places where the record industry is extremely weak like the occidental Third World countries?

Also, do you think all this media hype surrounding the garage rock revival of the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Hives is creating some kind of animosity against those bands? I mean, do you really like them?

I must begin any answer to these questions, which I see as one question, by saying that I’ve long hated the rock-critical misuse and overuse of the terms “hype” and “revolutionary.” “Hype is a term often applied to someone else’s promotion,” I wrote in 1972, which I’d now amend to the snappier “hype is a bad word for someone else’s publicity.” And in a 1970 essay called “Rock ‘n’ Revolution”–collected in Any Old Way You Choose It and on the web site–I explained why I wasn’t revolutionary and rock wasn’t either. I expand on this in the introduction to Cooper Square Press’s Any Old Way reprint.

All artists promote themselves; if they didn’t, you wouldn’t know who they were. The mysterious Hives took me by surprise, but I was well aware of both the Strokes and the White Stripes long before they got real publicity, much less major-label muscle, and I’d swear on penalty of perjury that their musical attributes had New Yorkers who’d seen them excited as soon as they first gigged (Strokes) or hit town (White Stripes). Maybe the Hives were as constructed as ‘N Sync, not a bad group in my book, but I doubt it. I like their record even more than White Blood Cells or Is This It.

As for revolution, Christ, what can I say? As a vocal and explicit leftist for my entire professional life, I want to see a radical redistribution of wealth and an end to racism, sexism, and homophobia. But that won’t make me pretend there’s anything inherently communist or socialist about rock and roll–at its inception, it was an expression of democracy at its American best and capitalism at its entrepreneurial best. Forgetting Eastern Europe for the moment and Afghanistan longer than that, the most successful radical changes of power in the past few decades have been in South Africa and, God help us, Iran. In the case of South Africa, the beat music I love best from the apartheid period, r&b-inflected mbaqanga, was at best a sustaining social force; it had no political content or thrust except as an expression of identity and pride. The revolutionary music, which really did serve a political function, was a cappella mbube as exploited by the ANC and the union movement, not any kind of “rock.” You want a revolution, which in Peru is understandable, forget rock and roll and get involved in the union movement, which was certainly the most effective internal force in South Africa and has the advantage of improving the lives of the poor incrementally just in case the revolution doesn’t kick in. You want a revolution, make sure it isn’t like Iran’s, which banned music. That means doing your damnedest to keep the Senderos out of it. Revolutionaries tend to be puritans. Rock and rollers tend not to be. I prefer rock and rollers. And I’ve always argued that one reason revolutionaries start so few revolutions is that puritans are a pain in the ass.

That said, I agree that white middle-class American males have a harder time revitalizing rock and roll than people who need to struggle for its musical prerogatives. But on the other hand, white American males are generally better-versed in its prerogatives, which is how we get inspired neoclassical formalists like the Strokes and the White Stripes. To me, rock en espanol, so-called, almost always looks better on paper than it sounds coming out of my speakers, for reasons I assume are personal matters of taste, as I explain in the Subjects for Further Research section of the ’90s CG book. I’m not saying I’m right, but I don’t get it; speaking Spanish would probably help. And though rock en espanol has its own formal approach, a lot of the “progressive” music I hear from so-called Third World countries (Sepultura from Brazil, Junoon from Pakistan) seems locked in to arena-rock notions of grandeur that I haven’t had any use for since punk–although one exception to that generalization (every generalization I’m making here and elsewhere has exceptions) is Pulnoc from Czechoslovakia, where rock did promulgate social change. Go figure.

Finally, what I figure is this. The fact that white middle-class American males have a hard time revitalizing rock and roll leaves a lot of work open for white middle-class American females. You go grrrls.

> >From: Stanley Whyte
> >Date: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 10:15 AM

Do you ever look back at your 30+ A lists, scan the lower reaches for discs that you gave an A- to at the time and think, “I have no idea what that record sounds like anymore”?

I just looked over the bottom reaches of my ’70s A lists and had no trouble recalling the general sound and feel of every record there. Do I remember all or most of the specific songs on those records? Probably not.

> >From: Jeff Hamilton
> >Date: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 3:08 PM

Do you still perceive rock ‘n’ roll as at the vanguard of cultural and social formation? And if so, on what basis can you claim the significance of what you write about (i.e., pop music)? Obviously, there’s a premise here about the relation of rock ‘n’ roll to popular music, and in recent years you’ve been involved in opening up the term pop to musics you once more or less disdained (Richard Rogers, non-Anglo-American pop, world music, etc); so, too, I assume that since your politics have not considerably repudiated the New Left, the cultural vanguard remains a desirable claim on which to stake your intellectual labor. But do you ever worry about the way pop (and particularly pop music) rescales emerging cultural vanguards? Do I have your work on pop (and semi-pop) music right in describing it as a corrective for the distorted–perhaps even grandiose?–claims about the cultural and especially political significance of rock ‘n’ roll decadence and liberation that founded rock criticism as a journalistic beat?

Since I find both the tone and terms of this multiple-part question confusing if not contradictory, let me make a few necessarily unfocused points. Did I ever perceive rock and roll as being “at the vanguard of cultural and social formation”? Not in such jargon, that’s for sure. At this point I don’t feel any need to claim significance for what I do–the proof is in the pudding. People find what I do interesting, I find what I write about interesting, everything else is a bonus. My fundamental political conviction about rock and roll has always been that it’s democratic. For all the complications that term involves, complications that in my view I’ve explored for hundreds of thousands of words and have no need to expand upon here, that continues to be true in countless different if not apparently contradictory ways–pop is democratic in one way, alt/indie is democratic in another, hip hop is democratic(sometimes even at its most bling bling) in another, Africans playing electric guitars are democratic in yet another. For a long time I thought rock and roll was proof that capitalism was or could be democratic too–not a fact that ever made me happy in itself, just one that any realistic progressive had to take into account. In many ways it still is. But I’m appalled by the evolution of megacorporate structure, and even though there’s still good work done by good people who make their livings within that structure, the structure itself is much worse than anything I fully envisioned 30 years ago, although John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar certainly presaged it, scarily enough. As far as “rock ‘n’ roll decadence and liberation,” well, the notion that “decadence” is “liberating” has always been a bugbear of mine. But I don’t think it “founded rock criticism as a journalistic beat,” whatever that means–I don’t even find the idea in Bangs or Meltzer, who I suppose are who you’re thinking of. (Nick Kent, maybe. So what?)

> >From: Brent by God Sanders from Chattanooga by God Tennessee
> >Date: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 10:30 PM

Why do you hate Rock and Roll so much?

Why do you think southern born rock performers are only worthwhile when they conform to your bumpkin specificities (hey, if you can make up words, so can I)? And why do you think that using derogatory slurs against them is okay?

Who died and left you boss?

Do you really think that your intimate relations with a thesaurus so easily masks your obvious clueless frame of reference for the subject you write about?

And isn’t Greil kind of a pussy name?

Fuck you too, asshole.

> >From: Chris Feik
> >Date: Thursday, July 04, 2002 10:47 PM

OK, OK, of course rock and roll is America and America is rock and roll. But in an age of creeping American unilateralism I wonder about occasional parochialism in your writing of Rock History (not so much recently, I admit). When you wrote about “avant-punk” way back in 1977, you assimilated it into the legacy of American acts like the Stooges and New York Dolls. Seems wrong now–those bands were drug-fucked suburban aesthetes, whereas the Pistols and the Clash had something else cooking. In Australia–no slouch when it comes to provincialism–the first Saints record was a triumph of angle-grinding guitar that drew on the Stooges, etc., but meshed it with the Brit Migrant Experience. It was avant-punk, no worries, but for you it was a “naive one-shot” or some such. Kraut-rock never got a guernsey in your Consumer Guides despite the undeniable joys of Neu! And I can’t believe you would just dismiss Abba like that. What’s going on, Robert?

First of all, I don’t think the Stooges or the Dolls were suburban aesthetes–Iggy was some kind of trailer trash and Johansen is from Staten Island, which ain’t the suburbs (and of course Thunders and Nolan were much proler). In any case the connection I drew was formal, which is undeniable in an evolutionary way. What’s more, to me the idea that the Dolls and of course the Ramones (also in no way suburban, ever been to the boroughs, man?) made Britpunk possible is an absolute historical fact. Where I dissent is from the stupid Legs McNeill bullshit that the Clash and the Pistols weren’t different and every bit as good. Going on to the question of Yurrup, well, band for band I don’t hear it that way. I tried to like the Neu! reissues and didn’t get as far as I did with Can, can still barely get through an Abba comp much less an album, though I do love the predictable specific songs. More to the point, I got into pop out of the conviction that America and Europe are at war culturally, and statuswise it’s clear to me that America is still the underdog–that Europeans, the British and the French and the Germans each in their own way, continue to look down their noses at American vulgarity, and Americans continue to suck it up. And I also continue to believe that the African influence on this particular polyglot, democratic, geographically heterogeneous yet electronically hooked-up culture gives the U.S. insuperable advantages in pop, as evidenced most recently in hip hop, now an undeniable world music where the U.S. maintains an undeniable musical edge.

> >From: Cindy C.
> >Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 12:18:43 EDT

I would like to know what your favorite bootleg albums are, i.e., what great “A” albums are we missing simply because the material isn’t officially released? I know you listed Pulnoc’s Live in New York on your 1989 A list. Is this available for purchase anywhere? You also mentioned Television’s Arrow. Is the newly remastered The Blow Up better than the old ROIR cassette–only a B+? What are your Top 5 favorite bootleg CDs?

Basically, I’m not interested in bootlegs. The ones mentioned in the letter are every one I’ve ever cared about except for the techno mix tape DJ DB gave me in 1993 and a few live tapes by Tin Huey I used to play in the late ’70s–and, oh yeah, I own the Stones’ “Cocksucker Blues,” that’s nice, and I think I own a Neil Young boot or two. The Pulnoc isn’t available, but a less distinguished similar CD recorded the night after is, assuming Globus International is still in business; I explain the difference in the ’90s CG book. All these records are by artists I had a personal connection to–people I reported on, usually. Generous fans send me tapes and records now and again, and Greil Marcus once persuaded me to drop 80 bucks or something on Dylan’s Ten of Swords (in addition to giving me other precious items, notably the Manchester concert), but I never seem to get into them. I’d rather check out more of the generally available stuff I’m always behind on. I know bootlegs aren’t all collectoritis, rarity for its own sake, and adoration of the genius. But too often they’re close. Really not my kind of thing.

> >From: Frank Kogan
> >Date: Friday, July 05, 2002 9:07 PM

Could you say more about canons? When interviewed by Barbara O’Dair you expressed ambivalence towards them, leaning more (I thought) towards distrust. I myself think that a canon can be bad or good: in philosophy, the canon has narrowed and distorted the field. In film criticism, however, the auteurist canon, esp. Sarris’s, has had a wildly positive effect, encouraging interest in everything and rescuing whole areas of culture from oblivion. I think canon-making–e.g., The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll–has helped rock criticism more than hurt it (so far) and hasn’t stopped me from liking K-Tel’s 1975 Disco Mania compilation even more than the Who’s Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.

I think canons can be very useful, both as monoculture, a body of aesthetic knowledge and experience for people to share (and also rebel against), and, shit yes, as a list of high-quality works for people to, shit yes, consume. But when the rock and roll canon becomes the domain of MTV and Rolling Stone, it obviously loses a lot of its charm, greatly accelerating the chief negative effect of canonicity, which is to leach the freshness and charm from art–an effect that already occurs naturally in time, but is intensified by respectability. To put it another way, I’m not at all sure that Chuck Berry wouldn’t be better off as a living artist without the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, although it’s probably done wonders for his accrued wealth. My own relationship to the rock and roll canon has clearly changed with the years. The 70s Consumer Guide book is definitely a kind of canon-defining work, making the case for Van Morrison and, say, the McGarrigle sisters, and against Black Sabbath and, say, Donny Hathaway. But one reason I devoted a whole Voice supplement to my various ’70s preferences while tucking my top 10 of the ’80s in agate into an essay and not bothering with a ’90s list is that no one including me could imagine that anybody but me thinks Guitar Paradise of East Africa and Latin Playboys are the two greatest albums of the ’90s. I think the canon is far murkier, vaster, and more various now than it was 20 years ago, and that this trend will likely continue. I don’t think that’s necessarily good, either. But it’s the way it is.

Who are the 5 best ballad singers of the rock ‘n’ roll era? By “ballad” I mean “Moon River” not “Barbara Allen.” “Rock ‘n’ roll era” can mean whatever you want it to.

• Frank Sinatra
• George Jones
• Willie Nelson
• Al Green
• Elvis PresleyIf Sinatra ain’t rock-era enough for you, just stick in Justin Timberlake. Billie Holiday isn’t even rock-era enough for me.

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  > >From: Wayne Greene
  > >Date: Saturday, July 06, 2002 11:29 AM

  Major or indie–you asked for it…

• If Artemis, distributed by RED, is considered major distribution, then Bloodshot, distributed by ADA, must be the same.
• RED–owned by SONY.
• ADA owned by AOL-Time Warner–furthermore, all of ADA’s back end finance, manufacturing, and pick-pack-and-ship is all performed by WEA.
• Real World–distributed by Virgin/ EMI.
• Rounder–distributed by Universal/ UMVD.
• Mondo Melodia–distributed by Ark21/ UMVD.
  You obviously know more about this stuff than I do. For over a year I’ve contemplated writing a piece about what is now indie, which would involve doing research of exactly the sort your question involves. I’ve rejected the idea mostly because it seems too damn specialized, although given how many protestations of virtue go into these questions maybe I should. My basic suspicion is that deals vary so much that any generalization is difficult if not impossible. Independent distribution is such a threatened business that distribution in itself can no longer be a test of whether you’re indie or not. In this particular case I’d want to talk with the heads of Artemis, Bloodshot, and Ark 21, all relatively accessible guys, and see what they have to say. My information has RealWorld going through Narada. Is Narada in turn Virgin/EMI? Oops, missed that. Does anybody really want us to know? Often I think not.

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  > >From: OvrwrkdB
  > >Date: Saturday, July 06, 2002 10:04 PM

  In your section of reviews of albums by the Who, you called The Who Sell Out ”their only great album” and yet, you gave Who’s Next an A, downgraded from your original grade of A+. Isn’t this a contradiction? Or is there a further explanation at work here ?

  The brief answer is that for a long time I’ve found it surprisingly hard to listen to the Who. In the ’70s book I rankWho’s Next seventh, although I think it was my number one in the zeroth or first Pazz & Jop. Now it would certainly dip below Blue, John Prine, ZOSO, the long-lost Cry of Love, probably the even longer-lost Motel Shot, and others. I put it on for the first time in at least a decade as I began writing this, and it certainly sounds good. But in the ’80s it became clear–I edited a great piece by Mick Farren that made the argument very strongly–that the Who had turned into (very nearly) the worst kind of art-rock band, and with benefit of hindsight all that synth noodling and Daltrey emoting on Who’s Next makes me a little nauseous. Anyway, I always loved The Who Sell Out best of all.

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  > >From: Mark D. Bradford
  > >Date: Monday, July 08, 2002 7:13 AM

  One of the most startling things I’ve ever read about/by any critic, was an interview Dave Marsh gave not long ago in which he talked about how upset he was when Harry Chapin died. Harry Chapin. They had to agree to disagree about Harry’s records, but they’d been good friends, anyway. (Maybe there’s more–or less–to that. I wouldn’t know.) Somewhat similarly, Pauline Kael once talked about having been very friendly with Jean Renoir (or Sam Peckinpah?), and how painful it was for both of them when his work went into decline. Have you ever been in a comparable position?

  I believe friendship is more important than music, which is probably why I have so few friends who are musicians, the only “famous” ones people I knew long before they were “famous”–Roy Nathanson, who I met when he was Ray Dobbins’s 21-year-old boyfriend, former Mofungo bassist Robert Sietsema and that circle, some salsa musicians who I’m connected to via a niece-and-nephew who managed a band and then opened a club in San Juan, a few jazz players who are friends of my trumpet-moonlighting brother-in-law. In those cases I’ve sometimes reviewed records anyway, since omitting them would read wrong in the CG code that anything omitted isn’t worth my while. I once panned a Phil Ochs record and then got to know him doing political work in the ’60s–he quoted my meanest comment (“couldn’t play the guitar any worse were his right hand webbed,” I think) in his press kit and died owing me five bucks. And God knows I’ve really liked a few of the musicians I’ve met. But in general this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me. And I always wonder about journalists, especially critics, who form close relationships with lots of musicians. Bad for the work, seems to me. I hate saying negative things about people I like. But I grit my teeth and do it anyway, as pungently as possible.Less general topic: Can. Erstwhile part of the Euro-”progressive” problem, with occasional, largely unrealized hints of a solution. You reserved judgment in ’70s CG book, and panned Soon Over Babaluma, made roughly two years after their semi-improvised Stockhausen synthesis began to decay into tuneful air conditioning. But unlikeaficionados who prize the earlier, “sprawling” Tago Mago, I prize it only for the singularly unsprawling (and never equaled by them) lead cuts on what was once Side 1: three abrasive tracks-resembling-tunes that cross-reference Stockhausen via Fun House rather than Miles Davis (who was listening to a lot of Stockhausen himself, actually; cf. “Calypso Frelimo”). Bullshit?

  I‘ll try to dig out Tago Mago and play those three tracks. But I put enough time into that band to be highly dubious. Their instrumental tone and rhythmic feel always seem at least somewhat wrong to me. I’ve listened to too much jazz to settle for less.

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  > >From: Chris Feik
  > >Date: Monday, July 08, 2002 10:06 PM

  Why is Lionel Trilling one of your heroes?

  To be honest, I almost never look at Trilling anymore–he certainly isn’t up there with Raymond Williams, Pauline Kael, A.J. Liebling, or for that matter my friend Marshall Berman, who has most of his virtues, a much broader frame of reference, and none of the half-conscious snobbery that’s such a drag on Trilling’s moral/political impulses. But Trilling stood out back in the New Criticism days (which I always maintained presaged text-first poststructuralism far more than the pomo crowd generally admits) for insisting that literature was always more than text, and the clarity and grace of his prose put him on another level from his lit-crit contemporaries. Stylistically he makes a nice corrective to the knottiness of Williams, who together with Kael I regard as the greatest critic of the 20th century (that I’ve read). Without having rechecked either, I’d guess I’d still feel more agreement with Trilling on Jane Austen than with Edward Said, even though recent readings of Persuasion and Mansfield Park very much brought home Said’s criticism of the unacknowledged sociopolitical underpinnings of Austen’s enlightened civility.

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  > >From: George Koo
  > >Date: Monday, July 08, 2002 10:51 PM

  What do you feel about DJ culture? DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, X-ecutioners, etc. Do you feel that they are legitimate artists or just creative opportunists?

  I think DJ Shadow is some kind of visionary genius, like Kid Koala’s album a lot, and was completely delighted by Koala in the context of Bullfrog earlier this year. But for the most part I think there’s too much technique and not enough content in DJing. Musically it strikes me as being a little like drum solos or African percussion ensembles–usually I want more.

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  > >From: Dave Q
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 3:32 AM

  Hi Dean! You are truly God-like and I know all your books inside out and back to front–as a writer you are without peer. (The Dave Mason section in the ’70s CG book is the best comedy writing I have ever seen.) However, this question is directed to the “critic” more than the “writer”–does it ever bother you that many of the acts dismissed as “meltdown” or “D-” in earlier CGs have gone on to be revered and subject to massive critical re-estimation (e.g. Black Sabbath, Tim Buckley), while others who you championed (e.g., various singer-songwriters) have vanished without trace, and their records aren’t even in print anymore? When current bands that you like cite Rush, Japan and Montrose as “influences” does it elicit a benign chuckle, or a Homer Simpson forehead-slap, or do you see it as more depressing evidence that civilization really is ending? I’m just wondering how this affects writers in general as we’re in a unique period in history where the pioneers of a sub-genre (rockcrit) are still active but have now been around long enough to see what effect their ideas have had on pop music, or pop music discourse at least.

  It’s never occurred to me that ’70s AOR/art-rock is responsible for the shallowness of today’s pop, such as it is. Studio virtuosity has been a law unto itself in pop since before the rock era.

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  > >From: Astral Weaks
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 1:07 PM

  What was it like at the inception of rockcrit, back in the mid-’60s? And did you still think that you would be doing it today?

  We were making it up as we went along and made a lot of mistakes along the way, but the best of us were onto something of tremendous importance intellectually. I thought it would always be part of what I did, didn’t imagine it would be all of it.

  What do you feel that the field has gained and lost since then?

  It’s gained professionalism and a body of knowledge, and lost inspiration (an organic maturing process) and freedom (I blame capitalism).

  What do you feel about the apparent decline in standing critics have had with labels since the ’70s? The way I’ve read it, labels used to be more than happy to sponsor junkets and give out records, while today they won’t even send out anything due to fear of critical piracy and leaks.

  All us early rock critics made our own rules because we were the only game in town. That meant among other things that if we wanted to write actual criticism, we could. Soon, although less soon than might have been predicted, both editors and imitators realized it was possible to prepare a less demanding rock-journalistic product, and true critics have been embattled ever since. As for the record companies, all celebrity journalism has been subjected to similar constrictions. Celebrity journalism feeds off access to fame, an easily controllable commodity. The more writers out there, the less access you have to give them to get what you want.

  Have you ever objected to the winning album/single in the Pazz and Jop poll? If so, what, why, and who did better?

  I thought Imperial Bedroom and the Arrested Development album were bad choices and said why at the time.

  Do you remember how much your first Rolling Stones concert tickets cost?

  Five bucks Canadian, I believe–maybe four. I never had to buy them again.

  Word association/opinions on:

  Richard Goldstein & Sgt. Pepper. 
  He was wrong. He’s wrong about Eminem too.

  Dennis Wilson 
  Dead.

  “Now Sounds” 
  What are they?

  The latest Stones tour. 
  I’m not going unless somebody begs.

  Wes Anderson 
  Seems pretty good, prefer Mira Nair.

  The “new” NYC/Brooklyn scene. 
  I’m too old for scenes, but I’m sorry I haven’t seen more of the bands.

  “The Osbournes” 
  Good show that portends many worse shows.

  Emo 
  Not what it should be.

  The absence of bass players in some of today’s best bands. 
  Sleater-Kinney seems to motorvate without, but I can’t think of another one offhand.

  Anthony DeCurtis 
  Detested his priggish, status-conscious Lester Bangs piece.

  Uncut magazine 
  Is that about foreskins?

  “Punk Chic” 
  The only Chic I ever liked had Bernard Edwards in it.

  Sound Opinions
  Opinions are like brains–everybody’s got one.

  Clear Channel Communications 
  May they go out of business in ignominy without further compromising my 401k.

  Americana 
  I’ve crossed the country by automobile 10 times and would love to do it again.

  Seo Taji, the inventor of hardcore Korean “Pimp-Rock.” 
  I have a thing against pimps.

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  > >From: Robert B. Tomshany
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 4:36 PM

  If it’s OK to ask about your daughter Nina, I’d like to inquire about her reactions to being reared by two professional writers and exposed to a huge amount of music. You’ve commented on Nina’s musical acuity before, and I’m sure you’ll do so again, but now that she’s fast approaching full-fledged adulthood I wonder whether she might express her talent by making music herself? Or, having two writers for parents, might she be more interested in a literary career, whether writing about music or something else? Also, if she seems clearly headed in one of these two directions, how does she see her relationship to these fields–art/show business on the one hand, or literature/journalism on the other?

  Nina shows no interest in being a writer, although she attributes her large vocabulary to growing up around us. She’s a pretty talented musician, but so far hasn’t been inclined to pursue that either. Insofar as she thinks about a career in music, she thinks about the biz or the studio. But she’s just finished her junior year in high school. Really, who knows?

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  > >From: Chris Feik<bcm@iasorecords.com>
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:40 PM

  Why do you reckon that Afropop has had such little influence on rock/pop emanating from the English-speaking world, whereas reggae/dub influenced the sound and feel of everything from Clapton to the Clash to Ace of Base?

  Reggae’s less foreign. It’s r&b-derived. It’s in English, an attraction never to be discounted. It comes from the Americas. And the rhythm’s easier–a distant cousin of the polka via ska, I’ve long believed. It’s really hard to imagine the Bellamy Brothers doing a competent mbalax or soukous rip.

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  > >From: Martin Miller
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 12:39 AM

  First, I would like to say that I have enjoyed your opinions on music for almost 20 years now and eagerly await your Consumer Guide column every month. I’m writing to ask your opinions on several albums that you’ve mentioned in passing but haven’t given a grade to due to fact that the records were released as imports or they existed before your Consumer Guide column was established. Anyway here’s the list:

  Blue Cheer, Oh Pleasant Hope 
  A late-’69 release that got a B+ and I haven’t heard since approximately 1980, if then.

  Adverts, Crossing the Red Sea 
  A Greil Marcus fave I never got (he does like those Britpunk bands with women in them)–I think the Adverts boil down to “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes.”

  Beach Boys, Pet Sounds 
  A good record that never meant anything to me personally–I prefer any early GH, also Wild Honey and many other late-’60s early-’70s albums.

  Del Shannon, Further Adventures of Charles Westover 
  Silly record.

  The Serpent Power 
  A solid A-, now available on CD.

  Moby Grape, Wow 
  B plus at the time, I play the Legacy twofer.

  Jefferson Airplane, Crown of Creation 
  Their best album, I thought at the time, although my initial dislike of them reasserted itself bigtime around 10 or 15 years ago.

  Soft Boys, Underwater Moonlight 
  Sounded good when I checked it out mid-’80s and I think I replayed the CD reissue, but you know, Robyn Hitchcock definitely ain’t my guy.

  Swamp Dogg, Total Destruction to Your Mind 
  My introduction to Jerry Williams, an A- at the time that I wouldn’t swear has maintained there.

  Streets–English punk compilation on Beggars Banquet label 
  A minus.

  Any studio or compilation album by Cream, Them, or the Yardbirds with a grade A- or higher 
  My fave Cream album is Goodbye, second Fresh Cream, certainly no other A minuses there, and I’ve never liked the Yardbirds on more than a cut-by-cut basis despite many attempts to enlighten myself; maybe it’s that Mickey Most thing, or maybe it’s the singing and songwriting, eh?

  Chrysalis, Definition 
  I remember the band name, vaguely.

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  > >From: Rodney Taylor
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:31 AM

  One of the things that I like about you is that your ears can appreciate both the Backstreet Boys and Sonic Youth. Do you think this reflects your having grown up when “popular” and “quality” weren’t seen as mutually exclusive categories, and do you see any kind of generation divide among rock critics (not to oversimplify or anything)? Do you think today’s rockcrit establishment, by and large, would have liked Elvis P. at the time, or would they have preferred folk or jazz purity?

  I think there’s no more important issue in rock criticism than the one you suggest–the idea that popular means bad not only is hell on good criticism, it’s a perversion of why and how rock criticism started. As with the novel, where a similar mindset leads arbiters to conclude that Walter Abish is more important than Bruce Sterling, what makes all but the most abstract subcultural rock work descends from the same kind of formal grounding that made Chuck Berry popular almost half a century ago. Yet the opposite is a working assumption of most young critics, especially the more adventurous ones, adventurous and smart being far from the same thing. That said, I think a lot of what’s popular today is very bad indeed. I only listen to the radio when I’m in the same room with my daughter, don’t recognize half of what’s played, and rarely feel much impulse to dispense with my ignorance. And that said, the best show I’ve caught all year, easy, was by Pink. We’ll see whether Orchestra Baobab/Super Rail Band matches up.

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  > >From: Charles Carlino
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 8:32 AM

  What do/did you have against Laura Nyro’s music anyway? Be as short or long-winded as you want.

  Hyperromanticsm generally turns my stomach, as do earth mothers. She did write some good tunes, though.

  In an old review of an Essra Mohawk album, you said: “When she calls herself a ‘full-fledged woman,’ it sounds like ‘pool player’s’ woman, which given her persona makes more sense.” What did you mean by “given her persona?” She’s a mysterious figure, sure, but what exactly is her persona?

  All I knew or know about Essra Mohawk is that album, which suggested (as I recall, and what I don’t recall is whether morbid curiosity tempted me to put on the reissue, so we’re talking 32 years ago) hyperromantic earth mother more likely to dig macho jerks than pencil-necked geeks. Although come to think of it most pool players aren’t exactly musclebound.

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  > >From: Jim McGaw
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 5:46 AM

  I’ve always been curious about the number of times you generally listen to a CD/album before grading it, and whether that number of spins has gone up or down over the years. Due to the nature of your job, it must be frustrating that you simply don’t have the time–unlike a casual fan–to listen to some of your favorite CDs over and over again.

  If you’ll read the intros to my CD books, you’ll see that not having time for my favorite music has long been the biggest drawback to this job. Nevertheless, the figures remain the same: at least three listens for an HM or written pan of any sort, at least five for anything that makes the body of the CG, and those are the low-end figures. That means spins, not dedicated listens–a lot of it is just processing while I do something else. But it does take time.

  Are there many artists whose catalogues you’ve completely reassessed in terms of your critical reception–and how has getting older played a part in all that? (Example: You once included Frank Sinatra in a “Meltdown” list, but years later gave a few of his reissues/compilations an A or A-.)

  People keep asking me this question and the answer is always the same: one hallmark of my work is that I don’t write about something until I know what I think. This means I don’t change my mind much, although I might if I had more time to relisten, I suppose. I do change it a little. As for Sinatra, he sucked in the ’80s. Also, hyperbole and cognitive dissonance are fun.

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  > >From: Paul Hayden
  > >Date: Thursday, July 11, 2002 9:43 AM

  In the past 5 to 10 years, which artist has pleasantly surprised you the most, and which artist has disappointed you the most?

  The rough answer to that question would probably be the past 20 years’ two most durable and prolific artists, with the possible confusing exception of Youssou N’Dour, whose quality is more tied up in live performance: Prince and Sonic Youth. I thought Prince could keep going forever, and while he may yet, he’s definitely slowed down in the past five years. From anybody else his recent output would be more than acceptable; from him it seems barrel scrapings. Sonic Youth, after presaging and then riding the grunge wave, basically abandoned the eternal evil teen thing and began to make some of the most beautiful adult rock ever: Experimental Jet Set, A Thousand Leaves,NYC Ghosts and Flowers. I’m not so sure about the new one, Murray Street. But this was music no one anticipated and many young and old failed to get.

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  > >From: Steve Farneth
  > >Date: Thursday, July 11, 2002 11:51 AM

  Have you had a chance to listen to the new Springsteen recordings yet? What do you think? Is this going to be a great, elaborately arranged rock album worthy of the ghosts he’s asking us to dance with or will it be self-conscious and written entirely in metaphor?

  I got invited to some listening sessions and tried to make one but couldn’t. “Elaborately arranged” is never a big plus by me, not even with six pieces, so I hope they’re not.

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  > >From: Chuck Tahirali
  > >Date: Friday, July 12, 2002 12:34 PM

  Having just read the pieces written by RJ Smith and Simon Frith for Don’t Stop ‘til You Get Enough, it is interesting to note the contrast between Mr. Frith’s apparently hard-won lesson (“As an editor Christgau taught me that self-expression is not a matter of writing what comes into your head but working and working on words until they say what you want them to mean”) and Mr. Smith’s pointed remembrances of the editor’s candor and spontaneity (“Bob Christgau doesn’t think the way other people do; he doesn’t filter his thoughts like most folks”).

  I find myself wondering: Which approach, if either, predominates when you create your capsule music reviews? What is the ratio of CG reviews that are, more or less, spontaneously composed (that write themselves, so to speak) to those that inspire or require constant refining, re-working and re-writing? Is enthusiasm for the music the determining factor (one way or the other)?

  The answer to that is simple. In speech, I’m notoriously candid. As a writer, I’m notoriously slow. CG capsules are generally worked, worked, and reworked, which is one reason their syntax is so dense. On the other hand, I’m always trying to catch ideas or conceits or free associations on the fly as I listen, and have been known to drink a midnight beer to get one flowing.

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  > >From: Stan
  > >Date: Sunday, July 14, 2002 9:09 AM

  What are your top five concerts of all time?

  I’ll leave this concert question out of the list compendium and answer off the top of my head: Big Brother at Monterey 1967, Luamba Franco at Manhattan Center 1984 (1983?), supposedly a subpar show, Hüsker Dü late at Gildersleeves in front of about eight people in 82-83, Clash at Leeds 1977, and, oh hell, Coltrane joined by Eric Dolphy on the encore at the Village Gate I believe in September 1962. Those were great ones–there are dozens more. A real list would require a week of listmaking, consultation, and thought.

  What artist/group(s) do you never miss when they come to New York?

  There’s no one I absolutely don’t miss–stay home a weekend for, or miss a big deadline for. Very close, however, are my two favorite live bands: Youssou N’Dour et Super Etoile and Los Van Van.

  With MP3s becoming so dominant, and CDs stuffed with filler, do you soon see an end to the “album” era?

  I think the LP may die and may not–probably not, they’re too useful for the DIYers who are the future of music. Either way, I don’t think MP3′s will have much to do with it. Some other Net technology might.

  Happy belated birthday to the greatest of all time! Will Robert Christgau retire at 65? 70? And if so, are there any critics with somewhat similar tastes that you would recommend to us folks who love good music but won’t have the time to sift through it all?

  I have no expectation of retiring, because I’m not going to stop loving music or needing to earn a living–I’m not rich or even well off and never will be. If the LP does die that could change. So could a layoff–the newspaper business isn’t necessarily eternal either.

  I know you listen for 8-12 hours each day. That’s an incredible amount of time. So, which do you do first–pee, or put on some music?

  Pee.

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  > >From: Stanley Whyte
  > >Date: Sunday, July 14, 2002 5:01 PM

  Looking back on your Stranded essay 24 years later, if you were asked to do it again would you stand by your choice or would you pick a different album? Or does picking one single album to while away the years on a desert island make sense anymore?

  Picking one album to while away the time on a desert island never made sense. It was just an excuse to write a long essay about something you love and get paid for it. See my introduction to the Da Capo edition of Strandedfor further elucidation.

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  > >From: Andrew Lapointe
  > >Date: Monday, July 15, 2002 1:09 PM

  How did you acquire the title “Dean of American Rock Critics”? Do you think there is a hierarchy in rock criticism?

  As I’ve explained many many times, I appointed myself Dean of American Rock Critics when slightly soused at a 5th Dimension press party, I believe in early 1970. It seemed to push people’s buttons, so I stuck with it. There’s obviously no official hierarchy within rock criticism–only real academies can do that. But if you mean to ask whether I think some rock critics are better than others, you’re damn straight I do. Don’t you?

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  > >From: Shy-but-fun-lovin
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 1:40 AM

  Is the ‘g’ in your name silent?

  No.

  Your prose has always been quite dense yet economical. Does it take a lot of time to get those sentences ‘just right’?

  Yes.

  Will you ever be able to live down a reasonably favorable (“Okay stuff”) Uriah Heep review you wrote back in ’73?

  Already have.

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  > >From: Vic S.
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 5:00 AM

  You’ve often said that Erotica is Madonna’s best album. Do you still feel this way, ten years later, and do you think it will undergo a reevaluation from the critical establishment since it was brushed aside in the controversy over her Sex book? Do you think Madonna’s legacy will include her musical achievements or only focus on her (over-discussed) “iconic value”?

  Yes, I still think Erotica is Madonna’s best album–not counting Immaculate Collection, of course. And yes, I think her music will at the very least stand alongside her iconic value historically–an issue discussed at some length in the Madonna essay in Grown Up All Wrong.

  Do you think you would like or appreciate Radiohead more if a female voice was singing the songs? If it was a Thelma Yorke instead of Thom?

  The right woman’s voice might make a difference, I suppose, though the portentous structures are no plus and I have a hard time imagining a woman writing those lyrics–unless it was Thalia Zedek or, to go back some, Nina Hagen, in which case I’ll take Thom, thanks.

  For such a world-music aficionado, I am surprised that to my knowledge you’ve never discussed the world’s most prolific artist, Indian playback singer Lata Mangeshkar (or even her sister, Asha Bhosle, who was the subject of that Cornershop song). What is your opinion of their voices and/or work, if you’ve heard any? And if you haven’t, if you can tell me your address, I’d be more than happy to send you some samplings!

  The only Bollywood album I’ve ever really cottoned to is the Luaka Bop Vijaya Anand, which I seem to have mislaid. I appreciate those sopranos in principle, but the reality is too much for me after three-four cuts

  In a hundred years, who do you think will still be remembered from the latter half of the 20th century in popular music? And what about in a thousand years (if our civilization is still around then)?

  In a hundred years the top candidate is clearly James Brown, but I believe many others will survive–it’s already been nearly 50 for the Berry-Presley-Penniman-Lewis-Charles-Diddley generation, and they’re not going anywhere. A thousand years is anyone’s guess. I hope there’s an inhabited planet in a thousand years, and that my great-greats-to-the-nth still have recorded sound. If so–James Brown! And also the Five Satins’ “In the Still of the Night.”

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  > >From: MXcR245Fmx
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 7:58 AM

  I’ve been rock-critical as a job for five years. The first four for a small weekly and then just over one year ago, the rock writer at the local daily offered me a job. As I had just dropped out of the philosophy program at my local university and was facing what seemed like an unholy mountain of student-loan debt, I accepted the higher paying gig. I also do a fairly small amount of work for a few scattered mags of varying repute.

  Now here’s the thing, the senior music writer (let’s call him Mentor, very sarcastically) is ten years older than me. I’m only 25, so he’s still relatively young. Over the last few months especially, he’s quite obviously been trying to make me irrelevant. Where we earlier had sort of traded off on assignments (it was never equal, but I was at least getting a small piece of the action), he now takes everything for himself, except for the geezers and the “nobodies.” For the most part, I do prefer talking to the less-than-famous and turning over strange rocks to discover something new underneath. But my Mentor has explicitly shut me out of major happenings where there has been lots of cheddar to go around. At first I thought he was trying to make sure I paid my dues (despite having slogged it out for nearly all of my adult life), and I could accept that. But it’s become quite obvious that he feels threatened by me and my zesty youth and is trying to bury me. The thing is, I have no desire to usurp him. I just want a fair shake.

  As someone who has aged gracefully in such a youth-obsessed industry, do you have any advice on how to confront my Mentor without him thinking I’m trying to push him into the Home for Aged Rock-Crits?

  Not knowing the quality of your work or the quality of his, I can’t answer that question. More than you seem to think depends on that. But I can say that there clearly aren’t enough gigs to go around, so that this kind of problem arises over and over. I’m glad you think I’ve aged gracefully, but I have not the slightest doubt (because every once in a while some younger colleague can’t resist telling me so) that my complete lack of interest in finding a more age-appropriate calling sticks in the craw of hundreds of people who think they could do my job as well as I do–or better, for finger-on-the-pulse reasons.

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  > >From: Tim Powis
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 8:03 AM

  How much do you need to know about music–the nuts & bolts stuff: harmony, chord changes, counterpoint & all that–to be a music critic?

  I don’t know shit about that stuff, and I’m a music critic. Long ago I thought knowing that stuff actually hurt criticism, and long ago it did–too often Jon Landau, a conspicuous offender, missed the forest for the trees. Now I’m very sorry I don’t know scads more than the dribs and drabs I’ve picked up over the years. When Alex Ross makes a harmonic argument for Radiohead, I wish I could tell exactly how unusual and exactly how relevant the details he adduces are. And of course, it’s a damn useful addition to one’s descriptive and analytic arsenal if you have the perspective not to take it too seriously–as Jon Pareles does, to choose just one example.

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  > >From: Mike Tapscott
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 10:55 AM

  I’ve been an admirer of yours for some time. One thing that’s puzzled me though, is your reaction to certain “alternative bands” like the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, or Wilco. I’ve wondered why you seem to have violent reactions to what they’re doing sometimes. Is it because you believe these groups are repeating things that have been done in the past? These seem to be some of the more innovative groups out there, and yet you still seem to prefer the Strokes or the Old 97s.

  What can I say? I think their “innovations” are pretty secondhand. Tricky and DJ Shadow and the Latin Playboys do the same kind of stuff much more daringly and totally. I didn’t think Mercury Rev or the Flaming Lips had much on the ball songwise before, and I don’t think they’re any great shakes at soundscaping either. If I sound vehement about it, that’s polemical. Everybody else is kvelling. If nobody else cared, I wouldn’t have to.

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  > >From: Chuck McCain
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 11:36 AM

  What was the first album and single you ever bought?

  Good question with an answer that would embarrass me if I got embarrassed about such things. First single: Doris Day, “Secret Love” (loved the B side, “Deadwood Stage”). First album: an Eydie Gorme record with “St. Louis Blues” on it that I either traded or sold to Mrs. Mulvihill across the street a few years later.

  If Greil Marcus decided to publish a new Stranded with all new essays from the surviving writers from the first, in addition to pieces from younger writers and people that didn’t get the chance the first time around, what album would you write about?

  Today, Sonic Youth’s A Thousand Leaves (still reeling from that breakup piece in the Voice), or some Afropop compilation. Tomorrow, something else.

  How come no label has reissued One Kiss Leads To Another by Hackamore Brick? Being as big a Ramones fan as I am, I’d love to see if it is as good as Marcus said it was in Stranded.

  Don’t worry about it–it’s not as good as Greil Marcus says it is. Neither is the Lora Logic album.

  Who the hell was Jo-Jo Dancer anyway?

  I’m absolutely convinced it’s Charles Aaron, and I don’t admire him for lying about it. Then again, what he wrote sucked too.

  Any early calls on contenders for Pazz & Jop this year?

  I never speculate in print about Pazz & Jop for fear of skewing the results.

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  > >From: Yon
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 11:53 AM

  Could you please tell me if you still hate Abba, as you hated them in the ’70s when they were active? What do you think about your colleagues like John Rockwell, Joel Vance, Greg Shaw and others who thought Abba were brilliant?

  Abba still don’t ring my chimes, although their expertise is undeniable if you like that kind of thing and their cultural status lends them a certain charm–that Australian movie with the Abba soundtrack a few years back was terrific, and the music helped. I supposed the right comp might be some kind of Honorable Mention, but last time a best-of came through, I found myself getting bored pretty fast much beyond “Waterloo” and “Dancing Queen.” As for disagreeing critics, so what?

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  > >From: J. Bennett
  > >Date: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 2:33 PM

  Back in 1977 you wrote a Consumer Guide discussing the albums of 1967. Would you ever consider doing a similar column on 1968? Of particular interest would be your thoughts on The White Album and Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, two notorious critics favorites conspicuously absent from the rock library lists in your Consumer Guide books.

  As I keep saying, lists are work, Jack. If somebody offered me enough money, I can imagine undertaking such freelance tasks. But I doubt they will, and I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy. I like The White Album, but it’s too McCartneyesque to be a favorite, and have never cottoned to Astral Weeks.

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  > >From: steinar storlokken
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 10:30 AM

  In a recent interview you mentioned the Beatles among your top 5 artists. Is it pure listening pleasure, or cultural/historical significance that places them in front of, for example, the Clash and the Stones?

  I play the Beatles more than any other ’60s group to this day, and also more than the Clash or the Sex Pistols.

  You have been widely known to be a huge Stones and Clash fan. Has your regard for these bands fallen, and, if so, why?

  My regard for the Stones has fallen only insofar as I don’t find their vision as bracing as I did up through, say,Some Girls. I still love the Clash, though I don’t play them much because they don’t suit my lifestyle.

  Is the omission of the Basement Tapes in the Core Collection an error?

  The Basement Tapes certainly belongs in any core collection (although, actually, not all the Band cuts are all that).

  How does your favorite album of the ’90s rank among the greatest albums of all time?

  My favorite albums of the ’90s mean less culturally than those from previous decades, but more personally, because recent music is always one of the things that keeps me alive.

  Do you still think Double Dee and Steinski is an A+, or do you think it sounds dated in the wake of more sophisticated DJ-ism?

  I still love Double Dee and Steinski. I still love Buchanan and Goodman’s “The Flying Saucer,” too.

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  > >From: Carrie & Mark
  > >Date: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 1:44 PM

  Ever consider retirement? I sure hope not. I don’t know what I’d do without my monthly Consumer Guide.

  I’m currently helping to care for four elder relatives aged 84, 86, 91, and 94. This is a great lesson in mortality, and by these ages I assume I will have retired–people do well outlive their competence these days. On the other hand, my father, who held down three or more jobs when I was growing up, was forced into retirement by the 1975 New York City budget crisis and did OK. I sometimes chuckle ha ha ha to think how impossible that would be for me economically, another thing that’s changed these days–I envy my father that option. I’d be delighted to work less hard than I do, afford to travel more than I can, and write what I want even more precisely and variously than is permissible even at the Voice, which obviously grants me enormous autonomy. All that said, I don’t foresee chucking the Consumer Guide unless the album-music biz model breaks down more than I think likely.

  Has your daughter had an effect on your listening habits? Has she turned you on to anyone you might’ve missed?

  My daughter exposes me to music I wouldn’t ordinarily pay much mind to, but since her main passions are teenpop and salsa, neither a genre I love, there isn’t all that much direct influence. She certainly turned me on to the great Pink, however–as soon as the first video was on MTV. And she made me to go to my first Backstreet Boys concert, which had enjoyable repercussions even if they’ve now gone down the tubes.

  How much do you use the Internet as a music source? Not for downloading of course, but as a source of information, buying music, etc.

  The speakers on my computer haven’t worked for over a year. Anybody wanna come to my house and figure out what’s wrong, then give me a downloading tutorial that works for my fully unloaded, four-gig, Windows 98 computer? On the other hand, I frequently buy CDs on the Net. It’s clearly the easiest way to find obscure stuff–just pop the title into Google if the usual suspects don’t have it. And for information I use the Net constantly, many times a day. Google is one of my favorite modern conveniences. It beats spellcheck by a mile.

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  Editor’s note: Several of the participants in this survey asked Robert some variation on one of the following three questions: 1) What are your favorite albums and singles of the ’90s? 2) What are your favorite albums of the ’60s? 3) What are your all-time favorite jazz records? Here, he tackles them all in one shot, along with a few other list-oriented queries. (Thanks to the following participants who asked for lists or were beaten to the punch with their questions: Scott Bassett, the Betatronix Gang, Charles Bromley, Joe Elsa, Kurt Jaeckel, Jim Ross, Vic S., John Tiglias, and Joe Yanosik.)

  I’m gonna deal with the rest of the list questions here, but first I’d like to say a few things about lists in general. I love lists, and that love is a source of my own peculiar cult status. It’s the reason I started Pazz & Jop, the reason I started the A lists in the back of the CG books. But let’s be clear–as Nick Hornby has made a mint proving (hey, give me some), lists are very boy. You should have seen me arranging my baseball cards, keeping Peter Tripp’s top 40, devising my pathetic top 10s of girls in Flushing High School at a time when I’d never had a single date (which, for the record, was all of my time in Flushing High School). This is why Greil Marcus attracts fans who write avant-garde theater pieces based on his critical fantasies and I get guys asking for my favorite albums by knuckleballers. Second, done properly, lists are work (as are grades, you think I just know about lots of records I don’t tell anyone about?). The reason I didn’t do a ’90s core library, much to the dismay of my editor and many reviewers, is that we were on a tight deadline and I wasn’t about to squeeze one out in less than the week I didn’t have, which is what the ’80s core library took. I’m not about to do that work here, either, except for some relistening on the ’90s and then ’60s top 10, which was fun. I love excuses to play records I love.

’90s albums

I will note, if you do not, that four of these albums put together previously uncompiled old music and one reconstitutes even more obscure thrift-store stuff. Only the Sonic Youth and Nirvana, plus maybe the heavily sampled Latin Playboys, are “new”/”progressive.” I will not generalize from these odd facts until I think about them for a few months, however, and would urge a similar caution on the part of my readers.

• Guitar Paradise of East Africa (Earthworks)
• Latin Playboys (Slash/Warner Bros.)
• Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves (DGC)
• Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying: The History of Elmore James (Rhino)
• The Music in My Head (Stern’s Africa)
• DJ Shadow: Endtroducing . . . DJ Shadow (Mo’ Wax/FFRR)
• Nirvana: Nevermind (DGC)
• Tom Zé: Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zétom (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.)
• Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Mercury)
• Iris DeMent: My Life (Warner Bros.)Didn’t make the cut, that doesn’t mean others wouldn’t come in higher if I made a project out of this:
• Arto Lindsay: Mundo Civilizado (Bar/None)
• Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet (Def Jam)
• Tricky: Maxinquaye (Island)
• Fluffy: Black Eye (The Enclave)
• The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs (Merge)
• Oruj Guvenc & Tumata: Ocean of Remembrance (Interworld)

’90s singles

• Fatboy Slim: “The Rockafeller Skank” (Astralwerks)
• Backstreet Boys: “I Want It That Way” (Jive)
• Public Enemy: “Welcome to the Terrordome” (Def Jam)
• Eminem: “My Name Is” (Aftermath/Interscope)
• B-Rock & the Bizz: “MyBabyDaddy” (LaFace)
• Boogie Down Productions: “Love’s Gonna Getcha (Material Love)” (Jive)
• L.L. Cool J: “Around the Way Girl” (Def Jam/Columbia)
• Los Del Rio: “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)” (RCA)
• FU-Schnickens: “Sum Dum Munkey” (Jive)
• John Prine: “In Spite of Ourselves” (Oh Boy)Second 10
• Kris Kross: “Jump” (Ruffhouse/Columbia)
• Cher: “Believe” (Warner Bros.)
• Fugees: “Fugee La La” (Ruffhouse/Columbia)
• Beck: “Loser” (DGC)
• Geto Boys: “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (Rap-a-Lot)
• Coolio: “Gangsta’s Paradise” (Tommy Boy)
• Puff Daddy & the Family: “I’ll Be Missing You” (Bad Boy)
• R.E.M.: “Losing My Religion” (Warner Bros.)
• MC Hammer: “U Can’t Touch This” (Capitol)
• MC Lyte: “Ruffneck” (First Priority)

Box sets

Fuck box sets. Of course I have a lot of boxes, they come in the mail, but unless they come in yours why should you? They’re for completists, collectors, scholars, not living music fans, and in general I suggest buying individual CDs or, often with the good guys, two-disc sets. My few active favorites will be no surprise because most are in the ’90s Consumer Guide book: James Brown’s Star Time, Louis Armstrong’s Portrait of the Artist, Janis Joplin’sJanis, the reggae comp Tougher Than Tough, Hip-O’s The Funk Box, The Essential Johnny Cash is about the right size, and maybe Rhino’s first doo wop box, though even there there’s a lot to be said for the individual CD route. I once wrote something nice about the B.B. King but never play it because I’ve got single CDs. The Etta James I crack occasionally. I like the cornball Armstrong triple MCA put out. And hey, I once bought the Richard Pryor as a present for my sister’s family. Gave them Star Time, too. And at least three times I’ve purchased the Armstrong as a wedding or birthday present. Voting with your wallet, always a good test.

Jazz albums

Note how many of my jazz selections date to the late ’50s and early ’60s, when jazz was what I listened to:

• Thelonious Monk: Misterioso (live at the Five Spot, Johnny Griffin’s six-minute solo on “In Walked Bud” has been just about my favorite “moment” in music since I was 18, have never connected deeply to a single other thing he’s done).
• Duke Ellington: Flaming Youth (’20s stuff, way out of print on RCA’s Vintage imprint, played it to death in the ’70s, one-disc Decca best CD substitute I know but not as good).
• Any decent Charlie Parker Dial comp.
• Louis Armstrong’s Portrait of the Artist.
• Louis Armstrong’s 16 Most Requested Songs if that counts (really a pop record I suppose).
• Miles Davis: Kind of Blue(Why fucking not?)
• Miles Davis: Jack Johnson (His best electric record.)
• Ornette Coleman: Of Human Feeling (Change of the Century my favorite classic.)
• Thelonious Monk: Brilliant Corners
• Sonny Rollins: Silver CityI play recent CD comps on Coltrane, Coleman, Monk, Fitzgerald. Play Holiday less because she’s so bleak but love her as much. I’m still exploring the Ken Burns Jazz comps.

Most “listenable” albums

Let it be said that when I play music for pleasure, it’s usually recent music. I love The Immortal Otis Redding and doubt I’ve heard it three times in the past five years. Also, I almost never listen for pleasure when I’m alone. Carola my love (and to a lesser extent Nina), welcome aboard. This one will be even more off-the-cuff than the other lists herein, and for sanity’s sake it’ll be in alphabetical order.

• Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Columbia)
• Aretha Franklin: Spirit in the Dark (Atlantic)
• Al Green: Call Me (Hi)
• Guitar Paradise of East Africa (Earthworks)
• Latin Playboys (Slash/Warner Bros.)
• The Marvelettes’ Greatest Hits (Tamla) (MCA cheapo CD omits “Twistin’ Postman,” boo.)
• Thelonious Monk: Misterioso (Riverside)
• Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (ECM)
• Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves (DGC)
• Dusty Springfield: Dusty in Memphis (Atlantic)
• Tom Zé: Brazil Classics 4: The Best of Tom Zé (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.)

’60s albums

(In order, but with no artist repetitions and no jazz, that would be too hard, and by the way, I paid cash money for numbers one, three, four, and ten.)

• The Beatles’ Second Album (Capitol)
• The Velvet Underground (Verve)
• The Shirelles’ Greatest Hits (Scepter)
• The Rolling Stones: Aftermath (or maybe Let It Bleed) (London)
• Dusty Springfield: Dusty in Memphis (Atlantic)
• Otis Redding: The Immortal Otis Redding (Atco)
• The Beach Boys: Wild Honey (Capitol)
• Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia)
• The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M)
• The Marvelettes’ Greatest Hits (Tamla)

Five favorite albums by knuckleballers:

• Michael Hurley/Unholy Modal Rounders/Jeffery Frederick & the Clamtones: Have Moicy! (Rounder)
• The Insect Trust: Hoboken Saturday Night (Atco)
• Ian Dury: Juke Box Dury (Stiff)
• DeBarge: In a Special Way (Gordy)
• Arto Lindsay: Mundo Civilizado (Bar/None)

L.A.Times Kinda Guy: Interview With Steve Hochman

By Steven Ward (September 2002) 

Los Angeles Times music writer Steve Hochman earned my eternal respect when he penned the introductory essay for the liner notes of Rhino’s 1996, five-disc prog-rock box set, Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era. Here was a major mainstream rock critic–a guy who’s been published in Spin, Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone–writing a piece entitled, “I Was A Teenage Prog-Rock Geek.” Hochman’s essay is smart, funny, and thoughtful for prog rock geeks like myself, and a highly illuminating introduction for those less familiar with that much-maligned genre. For this feat alone, Hochman deserves space among the writers who rhapsodize about the profession of writing at this site. He was kind enough to recently indulge rockcritics.com in an e-mail interview.

Ward:   I became a huge fan of yours when I read your introductory essay, “I Was a Teenage Prog-Rock Geek,” in the Rhino Records box set, Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era. Are you a middle-aged prog rock geek today?

Hochman:   Gosh, it sounds so unattractive when you say it like that…Middle-aged? I guess. Geek? Perhaps, though I’d leave that to others to determine. But no, I’m not a prog obsessive. I still like much of the old stuff–some as guilty pleasures, some as just pleasures. There are things that hold up, such as Robert Wyatt, some early and mid ’70s King Crimson and such. Other things remain admirable for their ambition, even if the execution now seems horribly dated and off-track. I’m much more inclined, though, to listen to things that my early prog experiences pointed me toward–real classical music (I mostly favor extremely early, pre-Renaissance stuff and 20th Century composers), world music (I hate the term, and don’t mean fusions, but the real, gritty music of indigenous cultures). Prog was a great starting point, taking up where the Beatles left off in terms of not settling for conventional pop structures. But let’s face it, much of it is dilettantish and downright silly when placed next to Beethoven or Bartok.

Ward:   How did you get involved in the box set project? Did Rhino come to you?

Hochman:   The piece I wrote for Supernatural Fairytales was actually a revision of something I’d done a year or two prior for Tower’s Pulse magazine, written on the occasion of Atlantic’s four-CD Yes box. The piece was a first-person essay done tongue-in-cheek in the mode of an AA-style sharing in which I came clean that I was, indeed, a progger. When Rhino publicist Cathy Williams called one day alerting me to upcoming projects and mentioned the prog box, I told her about my Pulse piece. And from that came Rhino’s offer for me to revise it for their project.

Ward:   Why do you think prog-rock is so maligned or ignored by the mainstream rock media and what prog bands were your favorites back then and which ones do you like now?

Hochman:   Guess I sort of answered this above, but prog remains an easy target because of its inherent, even essential pretensions and its favoring of purported intellect over the grittier, primal emotions of blues and rock ‘n’ roll. However, in the last 10 years or so, a lot more critics have confessed to an affection, even admiration for much prog–check out Mojo‘s regular coverage of it, including a recent Van Der Graaf Generator history. It doesn’t hurt that prog overlaps so much with the always-in-vogue psychedelia and glam. Is Bowie prog? Is Syd Barrett? Is Tommy or Quadrophenia? Is Led Zeppelin? Is Roxy Music? Is Steely Dan? If so, then those are perhaps the ones that hold up the best today. Early Tull still sounds pretty good, and a little Yes, some Crimson, and of course early Soft Machine. If one prog-related figure stands above all others, though, it’s unquestionably Brian Eno. But keep in mind that I’ve listened to Rhino’s Nuggets boxes a lot, while I only actually listened to the completed Supernatural Fairytales once, so that gives a better idea of what music of my youth has maintained a place in my life.

Ward:   One last prog rock question. Tell our readers about what happened at the L.A. Times: your boss, prog-rock hater Robert Hilburn, gave the box set a bad review, and then what happened?

Hochman:   It’s one of my proudest moments! Bob Hilburn told me that he was reading the booklet that came with the Rhino box and was struck by the insight and humor in an essay and started wondering who wrote it. It was only when he looked to the end of the piece that he saw it was by me. He reviewed the set and gave it a poor grade for the music, but very high praise for my entry, noting in print that he didn’t know that I’d written it until after he’d read it. There was at least one other review I saw (by someone who did not know me) that singled out my essay as the highlight of the project, so that was a big ego stroke.

Ward:   Your primary music writing gig is at the L.A. Times now. How do you like writing for a huge daily newspaper on a regular basis versus your freelance days filing stories and reviews for Rolling Stone and Creem in the old days?

Hochman:   I was a regular with the Times before I ever wrote for Rolling Stone (which I have done off and on for more than 15 years) or Creem (only once in the magazine’s waning days, a Robyn Hitchcock feature, for which I was never paid). So save for my very earliest experience as a music critic/journalist I’ve had the luxury of a steady gig for 17 years–a near-unique situation, from what I gather. Frankly, it’s got me spoiled.

Ward:   Tell me about your favorite rock critics and rock magazines you read in your formative years, and do you think any particular rock writer influenced what you do?

Hochman:   There wasn’t a lot of rock criticism to read in my formative years, at least not that I had access to. I grew up in Santa Barbara, north of L.A., so the first regular exposure to rock writing I had I guess was the L.A. Times Sunday Calendar. My grandparents subscribed to the Sunday Times, and would save the Calendar for me. So that would make Bob Hilburn the first critic that really had an ongoing impact on me. I occasionally would readRolling Stone or Creem back then, and I hung out a lot at KTYD radio in my last couple of years of high school and saw various consumer and trade publications there. When I moved to L.A. to go to college in ’74 I started seeing Melody Maker and NME and became a more regular Rolling Stone and Creem reader. I definitely remember reading Jann Wenner’s pieces, and Kurt Loder, Dave Marsh, Lenny Kaye, Ben Fong-Torres, Lester Bangs, et al with varying degrees of admiration. I remember first reading about Patti Smith in Creem, covering a performance with her backed just by Lenny Kaye doing “Piss Factory” in probably 1974. And the English papers turned me on to Eno and Sparks and helped pave the way for punk awareness. And of course the L.A. Timesbecame even more of a force, with Richard Cromelin, Terry Atkinson, Dennis Hunt, Steve Pond and Patrick Goldstein having a lot of impact on me as my tastes evolved and expanded–not that I always agreed with them. I remember being among the fans booing the name “Robert Hilburn” when Ian Anderson dedicated “Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die” to him at the Pasadena Civic in 1976 or ’77!! I was also a Deadhead, and the Times just hated the Dead in those days. So they all had a big place in my life–though I never really thought about being a rock critic myself back then. Never really even considered it as a career possibility (and only fell into it by accident later–what a fortuitous development, though). Oh, and in my adult years, though before I was a journalist, Greil Marcus’ book Mystery Train had a huge impact on me.

Ward:   Explain how you fell into this “by accident”?

Hochman:   I never even took a journalism class in college or really considered it as a career. I’d studied documentary film production and media theory both in undergraduate and graduate programs, and in the early ’80s was trying to get established in the documentary field, working with a small start-up company. But this was before the cable TV proliferation, and funding for documentaries was hard to come by. In late ’83, though, when I was “between projects,” some college friends of mine were involved in starting the Pasadena Weekly. I signed on for a few duties, compiling listings and writing a local sports column (profiles on youth soccer, marathoning grandmothers, whatever). I found I actually liked journalism and had some knack for it. Sometime in ’84 I also became Assistant Arts Editor, and then eventually Arts Editor. A budget crisis led to a change of publisher in early ’85, though, and he determined that the paper could get by without an Arts Editor, so suddenly I was on the freelance market. Music was my first love and passion, so as much as I could, I pursued that, writing for Music Connection under then-editor Bud Scoppa, who was invaluable as a mentor. I also picked up some assignments from the L.A. Daily News.

Eventually, I got bold enough to call Robert Hilburn with a pitch, which he rejected, explaining that he had his regular writers and there wasn’t much call for more freelancers. I asked if I could send him some clips and perhaps keep in touch anyway, and he very kindly said sure. That summer, out of the blue, I got a call from Terry Atkinson, who said they wanted to give me a tryout and asked me to do a couple of record reviews. I believe the first one was a Corey Hart album (oy!)…Anyway, the work grew from there to more reviews, features, and eventually news stories, along with me filling in for Richard Cromelin once a week and when he was on vacation, which gave me extra experience editing and coordinating the pop department’s affairs. Then in 1991, “Pop Eye” founder Patrick Goldstein left, and I was given the chance to take over the column.

Ward:   What’s your opinion on Jann Wenner hiring this new editor at Rolling Stone and his attempts to one-up the Blenders and Maxims of the world?

Hochman:   I’ll take a wait-and-see stance on that. Jann has made moves before, adapting to new competitors (Spin, Details, etc.) with mixed results. I don’t like a lot of what Rolling Stone has been in recent years. But then, I don’t think I’m the targeted reader any more. That said, no matter what changes there have been, Jann’s stamp has always been clear. It’s his magazine and will always reflect his sensibilities. Still, no magazine can have the preeminence that RS once had as a central cultural force.

Ward:   Do you think rock criticism is bad shape now? Better or worse than the ’70s or ’80s or ’90s?

Hochman:   It’s pretty hard to compare the eras. It’s a different job today than it was in the ’60s and ’70s, and even than in the ’80s and ’90s. For one thing, the field is much more diffuse–both in terms of the number of writers and outlets on the beat, and in terms of the fragmentation of music/culture landscape. And too many writers seem to be writing to impress other writers, not to serve their readers–though that’s not a new problem. As well, the nature of covering the music world has changed. Now it has a lot more to do with covering the music business rather than just the artists and the music. Certainly at the L.A. Times that is the case–the entertainment business is the business of L.A. One can’t separate those matters from the music, at least not entirely.

Ward:   Many music fans prefer British rock magazines like Q, Mojo, and Uncut to Rolling Stone and Spin. What is it that you think the British rock media has going for it that the Americans can’t seem to conjure up?

Hochman:   Same as always, the UK is much more compact a market, so it’s more possible to provide the kind of focus and delve into the kind of minutiae that Q and Mojo handle so well. The U.S. is just too big–you almost have to choose between the mainstream and the underground here. You can’t cover both. But in Britain they are not that far apart in many people’s minds.

Ward:   Do you prefer writing profiles, record and concert reviews or feature stories and why?

Hochman:   My joke is that I’ve been a music critic since I was 7, but only started getting paid for when I was 27, so reviewing is arguably closest to my heart–let’s face it, we all love having our opinions published! But I also love talking with musicians about their music, and with record company people about the mechanics of the business. I think the strongest things I’ve done have been profiles, and I’m very proud of my weekly news column, “Pop Eye”–I’ve learned to be a reporter on the job, and think I’ve done pretty well overall.

Ward:   Are your writing for any other publications right now other than the L.A. Times and can you talk about what kind of editor Robert Hilburn is?

Hochman:   I don’t seem to be writing with any regularity for other publications at this time. It’s been a bit since I did anything for Rolling Stone. I did a couple of things for Blender. I’m supposed to start doing some music segments for the “California Report,” a public radio program produced by KQED in SF. The Times stuff keeps me busy enough these days. Robert Hilburn is certainly the most important person in my career–he took me into theTimes world in 1985 and worked a lot with me to develop my skills as a journalist, not just a reviewer. He’s both enthusiastic and sharp, and expects a lot from his writers. Sometimes, I suppose, as an editor he put his stamp on things I wrote, but simply in terms of style, not opinion. And once he gained full confidence in my abilities he’s trusted me. For the last few years, though, he hasn’t done a lot of direct editing of my work. That more often falls to Richard Cromelin, who has a sense of precision and economy in language, and a near-photographic memory, so he’s hard to sneak anything by (and has saved my butt on numerous occasions by catching errors). They’re also wonderful people.

Ward:   Is there any particular interview you have done over the years that still sticks out in your mind–a favorite?

Hochman:   Two from my early years doing this stand out: Leonard Cohen (around the time of I’m Your Man) hosted me in his small L.A. apartment, and was tremendously gracious, thoughtful and, of course, articulate. That was for a fairly long piece in Pulse. Around the same time I interviewed John Lydon, which was almost the opposite experience. We did it in a driveway outside Virgin Records offices, he was also thoughtful and articulate, but when he was bored, it was over. Another one must be mentioned as well: an interview with Yoko Ono in connection to the film Imagine: John Lennon. It took place in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Naturally I was pretty nervous–the Beatles are the reason I do what I do, and I’d always admired Yoko. Her publicist, Elliot Mintz, ushered me in, did the introductions and we sat down. I set up my little tape recorder, and we started. About 15 minutes into the session I took a look at the recorder and, to my horror, saw that the tape had not moved an inch. I’d even used a plug rather than batteries just to avoid this kind of thing–but Mintz had turned off a light that was in Yoko’s eyes, and it turned out that the same switch controlled the outlet I’d plugged into. I figured I was screwed, but Yoko said, calmly, “That was just the rehearsal. Now we’ll do the real interview.” I stammered that there was limited time since other reporters were lined up for their turns, and she just said, “They can wait.” Other memorable experiences: The Times‘ first interview with Eddie Vedder (at the 1992 Lollapalooza in Irvine–he was terrific to talk with, and we walked out to the concourse, with him donning a wig and helmet, so he could go to the Rock for Choice booth and sign their petition)…Spending a day in San Francisco with Czech band Pulnoc, which featured members of the great underground band Plastic People of the Universe . Oh, and of course the week in 1989 I got to spend on the road in Florida with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers for a Rolling Stone“Tom Petty tour diary” piece. Sheesh, once I get started a bunch more come to mind as well–what a great job this is!!

Ward:   Tell us about the series of rock books you have edited–Popular Musicians–and do you have any plans to author a rock biography or another kind of rock book?

Hochman:   To say I “edited” that is not really accurate–and I was stunned when I got my copy of the set in the mail and saw that I had been given that prominent credit! The truth is, I was brought into that project by McCrae Adams, a staff editor at a company called Salem Press, which specializes in reference books for schools and libraries. He was really the editor. My role was simply to help find some contributing writers, review the planned entries to make sure nothing serious was being left out (and conversely, designate what acts could be eliminated). I also wrote the Beatles entry and I think one or two others, and edited a few others. But give the credit to McCrae, the real editor–though I’m proud that the set was named by the American Library Association as the reference guide of the year for whatever year that was. That will look great on a resume if I ever need to write one again! I have no real plans to write a book–and frankly, if I were to do so, I don’t think I’d want to write one about music, since I do that every day anyway. However, if the right offer came in, I would consider it. But I’m not out there pitching music book ideas. (I came close once, though, when I was flown to Memphis to meet with Joe Walsh about co-writing his autobiography in the early ’90s. Don’t laugh–the guy has had a VERY interesting, and at times tragic, life. We got along great, though he had some rather odd ideas about the book plans, such as the FIRST volume just going through his high school years. Back in L.A. he and I were set to get together to work on a sample chapter to shop to publishers, but when I called to get directions to his house, he never returned the call–and I never heard from him again. Oh well. However, if you listen to his album Ordinary Average Guy, which he was recording in Memphis while I was there, on the first song there’s a group of people shouting “hey hey hey” in the chorus…and I’m one of them! He didn’t give me credit though, which is maybe for the best…)

Ward:   What rock writers or music magazines do you think are producing the best work today?

Hochman:   My Times colleague Chuck Phillips might be the key music journalist of our time–and was very deserving of the Pulitzer he won a few years ago. His coverage of the business, and his exposes, have revolutionized the way we look at the music world, and he’s a tireless reporter. As far as pure critics, I think I enjoy reading Richard Cromelin’s reviews more than I do anyone else’s…though former Times writer Chris Willman (now at Entertainment Weekly) may be the most entertaining rock crit out there today. There are many others I respect and revere as well…I probably enjoy reading Mojo more than any other mag at this time, but that may have something to do with me being a middle-aged geek.

Ward:   What advice would you give any younger writers out there who might want to scribble about music for a living one day?

Hochman:   Get a life! No, I mean that. The worst music journalists/critics are the ones who know nothing outside of music. Nothing beats a broad, liberal arts education. I rarely read books about music (I mostly read novels and literature). And also, remember that it doesn’t always matter whether you actually like the music you’re writing about or not–what matters is what story there is to tell, and how you tell it. Mostly, just write–write anything, anywhere, any time (almost a Who title there…) just for the sake of learning how to write, before you try to get work as a rock critic. If you can’t write clearly (with strong command of language and grammar), you have no business trying to be a journalist. (But please don’t hold me to that in my answers to this interview!!!!)

Out of His Pen: The Words of Richard Williams

By Simon Warner (September 2002)

In U.S. culture, the rock critic is valued, even venerated. From Lester Bangs to Dave Marsh, from Ben Fong-Torres to Greil Marcus, the voices that have emanated from the pages of magazines like Rolling Stone and Creem have assumed a significant status in popular culture’s stampede; their commentaries have helped to cast light, not just on the music, but on our times.

The U.K. has not accorded such reputations to its pop scribes. In a land where weekly journalism has ruled the newsstands for decades, the names of writers on New Musical Express and Melody Maker are somewhat less significant than the acts they write about. If true aficionados of the inkies know their Kent from their Farren, their Welch from their Watts, few in the wider cultural landscape are aware of their existence.

Attention is drawn to this anomaly in a new American publication, Pop Music and the Press, edited by Steve Jones, due to appear in October 2002. In one of the volume’s concluding essays, Simon Frith–like Jones a prominent academic in the study of popular music–refers to Richard Williams, whom he describes as “Britain’s best rock critic.” The fact that Williams is mentioned nowhere else in the book, as fellow Englishman Frith points out, underlines the proposition that some of the UK’s finest pop commentators have endured an undersung reputation at home and most certainly abroad.

Richard Williams was a potent force in British rock journalism from the late 1960s and into the 1980s, and, in light of Frith’s accolade, it seems an opportune moment to remind ourselves of his achievement. Today he holds the post of chief sports writer on one of the UK’s most highly considered national newspapers, the Guardian, but his early professional years were spent preaching the rock–and jazz–gospel.

Born In Sheffield in 1947, Williams grew up in Nottinghamshire. From 1969 to 1973, he worked on the foremost music weekly of the period,Melody Maker, rising to Deputy Editor. From 1973-1976 he served Island Records in an A&R role. From 1976-1978, he edited the London listings magazine, Time Out, and returned to Melody Maker as Editor from 1978-1980. Along the way, he was the first presenter on a British TV flagship, “The Old Grey Whistle Test,” wrote for Let It Rock and Streetlife, acted as pop and jazz reviewer on the Times, and wrote books on Phil Spector, Bob Dylan and Miles Davis, before rising through the senior ranks of various UK national newspapers during the 1980s and 1990s. He has spent the last decade writing about sports around the world, but his love of music remains undiminished.

I recently spoke to Richard Williams about his career, about music, about rock journalism and about Simon Frith’s complimentary remark placing him in the upper echelons of popular music writers.

Simon:   Richard, could I just check a few biographical details? Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Richard:   I was born in Sheffield in 1947, but I was brought up more or less in north and central Nottinghamshire, although Yorkshire was my mother’s county, and my grandparents’ county.

Simon:   The period we’re perhaps most interested in for this account is the 1970s and 1980s, when you were writing regularly about popular music, though I must admit I’m more familiar with your books–the biographies of Phil Spector, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and the collection of your writings in Long Distance Call–than with you earlier music journalism from the late ’60s and ’70s. Maybe you’d just say a little about how your career as a music journalist unfolded?

Richard:    I did four years on the evening paper in Nottingham as a cub reporter on the Evening Post and the Guardian Journal, the morning paper, which doesn’t exist anymore. You had to work for both of them. After a couple of years, I got a youth column so I started to write about music, what was going on in Nottingham; the city had a lot of clubs. It was a time when you could get to see Georgie Fame or Graham Bond or Chris Farlowe any night of the week. R&B interested me, that was the music I really liked. So I had this column and youth page with fashion, a girl did the fashion and I did the music, and that was really good. In 1966/67 none of the editors or the subs had a clue what I was writing about so they could not change anything. If I wanted to write 500 words on Albert Ayler I could do it. When The Velvet Underground and Nico came out in 1967 I gave a page to it.

Simon:    You didn’t go into higher education.

Richard:    No, I was thrown out of school.

Simon:    So you were a teenage rebel?

Richard:    You didn’t have to do much in 1964 to get thrown out of school–smoke a few fags, grow your hair, snog a girl behind the cricket pavilion.

Simon:   So you rather fell on your feet with this local newspaper?

Richard:    In those days you didn’t need any qualifications to be a local newspaper reporter. Now you have to have 17 degrees, then 4 O-Levels would get you in, and a plausible manner, but it was good for me. I enjoyed all that–the golden weddings, juvenile courts, chasing fire engines.

Simon:    And you did that training that a regional or local, weekly or daily newspaper reporter did and still does?

Richard:    Yes, sure. The good thing was I had this column with which I pretty well had carte blanche. When the time came to apply for a job with the Melody Maker I could send them all these cuttings about Albert Ayler, the Velvet Underground, and Jimi Hendrix which formed quite a useful portfolio

Simon:    When did you join Melody Maker?

Richard:    1969.

Simon:    Would Ray Coleman have been the Editor then?

Richard:    No, Jack Hutton was the Editor then but he left after about six months, taking with him all the people who went to Sounds. I stayed. I thought about going with him but then I thought, “I’ve come to London to work for the Melody Maker,” so I stayed. Those who stayed got immediate promotion, everyone rises. Within six months of going there as the most junior reporter, I was Deputy Editor under Ray Coleman.

Simon:    So the Sounds defection was a major boost to your young career?

Richard:    Yes, it was.

Simon:    How old were you then?

Richard:    22 or 23.

Simon:    I suppose around that time Melody Maker was described as “the musos’ journal,” it had a particular character, a particular style.

Richard:    It was a very good time to be on it because music was being taken seriously and the more seriously you took it the more you were listened to, so it was a very good time. The NME at that point didn’t know how to cope–it was a pop paper. It didn’t know how to cope with what I would never call “progressive” rock, intelligent singer-songwriters, that kind of thing, so we had two or three years when the field was ours.

Simon:    But what sort of things were shaping and developing your writing at the time? Did you read other people? Were you reading other journalists? Were you reading literature? What sort of things shaped the way you listened to and wrote about music?

Richard:    I read a lot, I always did. I read Rolling Stone and Creem, but I also read The New Yorker from the age of 16,Downbeat and Jazz Journal, but I had also read the underground press since 1966–Village Voice, East Village Other, IT, Friends, and so on–but I actually have to say that at that point I was too busy to think about the quality of my writing. I was too busy writing to think about it very much. I think that’s why a lot of British pop writing of the time does not compare very well with American pop writing, because the Americans were very much aware of themselves as literary figures and became even more so. To begin with, we weren’t at all. We were writing for weekly papers which were demanding. We would have to write every day, sometimes, 10,000, 20,000 words a week–a lot of words every day: words, words, words. And you did, in a kind of benign way, see yourself as a propagandist, trying to get people to listen to good stuff, so of course you had to write persuasively but the persuasiveness was more a function of enthusiasm than of literary polish. There were exceptions more and more as time went on. I think Michael Watts was a polished writer from the day he arrived at the paper, a very grown-up writer, with very much more of a literary quality. I was more aware of other people’s literary qualities as an editor as well as a writer. I was thinking more about how our writers worked and fitting them in than I was really concerned with my own stuff, to my detriment as a writer. I think I should have done.

Simon:    Did you find as Deputy Editor that your writing chances decreased?

Richard:    Not really, no. I was more interested in being a writer than actually minding the store. I still wrote 20,000 words a week, easily!

Simon:   Were you shaped at all by literature? Were you shaped by fiction or novels in the way you approached your life or your passion for music? Did literature play a part?

Richard:    It played a part in my life. But I didn’t think of myself in those terms. I thought of myself as a journalist. I didn’t really think of myself as a writer even if I admired (Kenneth) Tynan, for instance, very much, and probably loads of other people, and certainly a lot of American jazz writers–beautiful writers, but I never thought of myself in that league. I think I was doing a job of day to day journalism.

Simon:    So you weren’t self-conscious about this process in the way that Hunter S.Thompson, Tom Wolfe or whoever were?

Richard:    No. Whenever I tried a literary conceit I always felt vaguely embarrassed about it and I tried to write clear, functional prose. I was more interested in getting the music right, getting it across more than anything else, I think. I loved finding things–Marley or Roxy Music or Laura Nyro or Springsteen, and presenting it to people, saying, “Here’s something you haven’t heard, go out and hear it, you’re probably in for a treat.”

Simon:    Did you have confidence in your own critical ability?

Richard:    Totally…always. I was lucky. I was brought up in a household where music was important. My parents weren’t musicians as such but my mother loved music, played piano when she was a girl. My father’s a parson, ran the church choir, he was Welsh. So music was a very important factor in my life and I’d always–right from when I was 11 or 12, I was in a skiffle group, then I was in a beat group, then I was in a R&B group, a folk group. After I got thrown out of school at 17 I spent a year mostly playing around the Nottingham area in a semi-pro R&B group called the Junco Partners–repertoire from Chuck Berry, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, etc. We split up after supporting Tom Jones and the Squires at the Elizabethan Rooms in Nottingham, the week “It’s Not Unusual” got to No 1, if memory serves.

Simon:    What did you play?

Richard:    Drums mostly, and guitar. And I had always listened ferociously under the bed-clothes when I was at boarding school when I was young, that kind of thing.

Simon:    So putting your head on the critical chopping block was never a fear?

Richard:    Not a problem–and not just to strike a pose either. I was absolutely sure I was right…and I still am.

Simon:    I tend to share some of the feelings you’re expressing. I think if you are going to be immersed in a subject you have to have some genuine self-belief that you’re saying things that are valuable, valid, and so on.

Richard:    And it comes mostly out of enthusiasm. I never really got any great pleasure from taking somebody apart. I could do it, but I’d much rather tell someone about something I have twigged, that I really like, that I think is going to be valuable and worthwhile, always.

Simon:    In the early 1970s there was an interesting development as NME did find its credibility with its various changes;Sounds was also on board. Could you just say a little bit about the scene in ’72/’73? Maybe that is a good couple of years to mention. How did you see the emerging British rock press at that time? There was a three-cornered battle that began around that time.

Richard:   And the two important corners were the Melody Maker and the NME. Most of the Melody Maker writers were from a background like mine–local journalism–so they had journalistic imperatives.

Simon:    Chris Charlesworth? Chris Welch?

Richard:    Michael Watts, Roy Hollingworth, Mark Plummer, Colin Irwin, Jerry Gilbert and those people. That was something that the Editor, Ray Coleman, who came from a local paper background himself on the Leicester Mercury, encouraged. So we had that background and we also had the Melody Maker‘s tradition of dealing with musicians as musicians rather than, as I suppose they’d be called today, style icons. Whereas the NME re-made itself, it came from a completely different direction, by getting people in–very talented people from the underground press–like Nick Kent and Charlie Murray and the next generation that came in, particularly Ian MacDonald and Angus McKinnon, very, very bright people; it secured a patch that was more aware than we were of music as fashion, or more interested in exploring it, a bit more aware. We were aware of it, but they were also able to operate without the consciousness of the sort of progressive rock dimension. They did not have to be nice about Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Yes. We had a tradition of supporting that kind of music. Personally, it was of no interest to me, but it certainly was of value to the paper. And it wasn’t negligible, you know, [it was] legitimate. But the NME could be much more light-footed, I think, in that way by concentrating on those things–we wrote about the Velvet Underground in Melody Maker years before anyone did in theNME, but the NME was more willing to embrace that as the central truth of their existence and the thing that defined theNME was, to us, an interesting thing but there were other things going on the world as well. The NME guys, they took people who were central to their canon, like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, and they made the world around that, saw everything through the lens of that consciousness.

Simon:    But in the ’70s and ’80s that must have made life more interesting for the journalists on both publications.

Richard:    Yes.

Simon:    The fact that you were both owned by IPC was a bizarre element in the story.

Richard:    Yes, it was.

Simon:    What was the relationship like between the two publications?

Richard:    Very rivalrous, very competitive, some degree of antipathy, some degree of amiability.

Simon:    Did you drink with these guys?

Richard:    I didn’t drink with anybody. There was a bit of that but not very much. The rivalry was too intense, if you like, especially as the circulation figures started to move. We were–and I’m speaking collectively rather than individually–we were dismissive of the NME for far longer than was healthy for us. And I think that was a big mistake–if these were mistakes–because I think the Melody Maker continued in its honest path and the NME had a perfectly legitimate role and viewpoint as well. They were just slightly different, and it was obvious which one would have more currency, which one would be favoured by the coming generation of music paper readers.

Simon:   Just to sidetrack for a second. That comment you made, “I didn’t drink with anybody”–just to explore that briefly. NME certainly made a virtue, they made a play of the fact that their journalists did mix with Jagger and Richard, Kent mixed with Iggy Pop. They drank and drugged together.

Richard:    And it worked very well.

Simon:    Was this something that you consciously avoided? Did you want to keep this world at arm’s length as a writer?

Richard:    Yes, as a person more than as a writer. I loved music and liked musicians, I loved watching musicians, but I don’t necessarily want to…I like being with my own friends. I don’t necessarily want to be co-opted into another world, subsume myself in it.

Simon:    So you didn’t see the cultural explosion, post mid-1960s, as all consuming and wanting to drown in It?

Richard:    It consumed me but it didn’t dictate who my friends would be. It didn’t dictate the social milieu I would move in. I never wanted to tag along with all that. I wanted to write about it. I feel the same way about sport. I don’t spend my time with footballers or cricketers, no reason why I should. Of course I had some friends who were musicians but they weren’t terrifically famous ones. I would think I was more friendly with British jazz musicians and, of course, there’s nobody less famous than British jazz musicians, or less celebrated than them.

Simon:    Just to put the 1970s into context as they related to your career: You were made Deputy Editor on the Melody Maker. Did you then rise to Editor?

Richard:    Not then. In 1973 I was offered a job as head of A&R at Island. Island was a wonderful label then, and Chris Blackwell, whom I’d met a couple of times, was a very interesting, charismatic person. I thought I’d quite like to get closer to the actual making of the music. Cause I had always admired people like Neshui Ertegun and John Hammond, you know, producers. I knew I was never good enough to be a musician–I never had any illusion–but I wanted to try that and Island seemed to be the ideal environment for it.

Simon:    That was the time when Bob Marley was being promoted and projected as a major new international talent.

Richard:    I’d written the first pieces on Marley on a trip to Jamaica. That’s really how I got to know Blackwell. So yes, Island at that time had Marley, Roxy Music, Richard Thompson.

Simon:    Amazing label. Do you remember those quite lavish booklets they would bring out with every album sleeve in full colour? Island did have a remarkable array of talent.

Richard:    They did. I had three years doing that, for better and worse. It was very interesting to learn from the inside how the business works, to learn what a deal was, to lose my illusions about the business side of things–that was good for me as a journalist. To see how a marketing campaign operates. But Island was actually growing too fast and over the three years I was there it became a much less happy place, a much less co-operative sort of place. It’s always difficult when companies are run according to one man’s vision and inevitably according to his whim. If you’d started a company like that you’d want to have a say in what went on and wouldn’t necessarily want to be argued with too much. It was quite difficult. I signed John Cale, Nico, a few other things, had something to do with Kevin Ayers. I got the Richard and Linda Thompson album I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight released because it had been put on the shelf and forgotten about.

Simon:    The first couple of albums they did together were terrific.

Richard:    Yes they were. Pete Wingfield–do you remember “Eighteen with a Bullet”?–was my artist. But I don’t look back on it as a particularly happy time, though it did teach me a lot about the business.

Simon:    So from 1973-76 you held the A&R role and then you left that behind.

Richard:    I’d freelanced for a bit. I had done that while I was doing my A&R job. I had been writing pieces for Let It Rock and Streetlife. So I left Island and freelanced. But then Tony Elliott, whom I didn’t know, was editing Time Out, the London listings magazine. He was the founder and the Editor but he was going on holiday and he wanted somebody to look after it with a view to having somebody do the job permanently as a replacement for him. I didn’t know whether I fancied it or not but I did it and ended up having two very rewarding years there. It was a very turbulent, very political environment in those days, long before City Limits, its later rival, came along. So all the radical politics were concentrated on Time Out, with a strong news section and we’d breach the Official Secrets Act every now and then. I went in as Editor, unknown to virtually everybody there, so that was quite difficult, quite challenging. I did it for a couple years and enjoyed dealing with theatre, cinema, music, books, dance, all those things. It was fun to have a broad view for a change. And then Ray Coleman stepped down as Melody Maker Editor and I went back as Editor at a very difficult time, 1978, when the paper hadn’t quite grasped punk but hadn’t shed its other old skin, and that was my job to do that…very difficult because the NME by that time had such a firm grip on it. My idea was to do it by just getting better writers, the best writing I could, so we did get some very good writing and some of the things we did I am very proud of–contributions by the likes of Mary Harron, James Truman…

Simon:    Did you have to let people go? Was that part of your brief?

Richard:    Not really, no. I did certainly de-emphasize some people. And then there were things that happened. Chris Welch went off with Musicians Only. IPC and Ray Coleman started what was supposed to be the musos’ own magazine. Chris went off to work on that. Other people came and went. I suppose I was after more of a Village Voice thing, and then I got to the point of doing a big re-design which was to be the big statement. Then there was a strike and they wanted me to put out a scab issue and I said “No” and walked out. I was there from 1978-1980. Ray Coleman walked back in, having been nominal Editor in Chief, and tried to reconstitute the Melody Maker as he had left it rather than how I had left it, so I don’t have a very happy memory of that. Two years of working incredibly hard. It was very nice to bring in James Truman, who’s now running Condé-Nast, Mary Harron, now a very successful film-maker, and various other people, whose work I was very proud of, but it didn’t, in the end, work.

Simon:    One other thread that’s just worth picking up before we move into the 1980s–you were the first presenter on that British television legend, “The Old Grey Whistle Test.”

Richard:    Yes. I did a year on it between 1971 and 1972. I didn’t enjoy it. The BBC paid me a very small amount of money. I didn’t give it very much time. I spent a day a week doing it. I was paid £20 a week to begin with to write and present it. They put it up to £30 half way through the year. No wonder I didn’t take it very seriously. I didn’t like being on TV anyway. They offered me the next year and I just couldn’t face it. I’m not the face on a screen. If they’d paid me £100 a week I suppose I might have been tempted to stay. But I’m very glad they didn’t because I wouldn’t have wanted to at all.

Simon:    You felt as if print was your “métier”?

Richard:    Always–except in the case of radio where you actually feel you are talking to people.

Simon:    So in 1980 you finished your stint as Editor at Melody Maker.

Richard:    I freelanced again. I had written since 1970 for the Times doing reviews. Miles Kington was the Pop Editor in the ’60s. When he didn’t want to do it anymore he suggested to John Higgins, the Arts Editor, that he might ask me to do some stuff and I had a good relationship with John, so I wrote, y’know…I didn’t work for them when I was at Island, but when I was at the Melody Maker and Time Out I did write reviews for him. As soon as I left the Melody Maker I started writing more for the Times. After a few months Harry Evans took over as Editor and he offered me a staff job doing a weekly listings magazine, which was an innovation at the time, because I’d been around, I knew about listings from Time Out. It was called Preview, a tabloid newsprint, but such an innovation that it did not attract advertising, so they changed it. Then Harry Evans went in under rather weird circumstances and Charlie Douglas Home took over and he stoppedPreview because that was identified with Harry, and he made it a Saturday “Leisure” section, and he asked me to edit that. So that was a step up, and I was still writing about music on and off and then eventually there was a new daily features page and I edited that. Then Charlie died and Charlie Wilson took over and I became Deputy Sports Editor. Then I became Features Editor when we moved to Wapping. The move to Wapping was not something I apologize for because, I think, despite the fact I hate Murdoch and his works, there was an historical inevitability about it. If Wapping hadn’t happened, the Independent wouldn’t have happened either. The technology we use here today could have been six years further down the line…what that would have done to the economics of the paper. It sort of liberated everybody, except those who lost their jobs.

Simon:    So, by this time did you feel as if you were emerging as a mainstream journalist rather than a music specialist?

Richard:    Yes, by that time I certainly was.

Simon:    And that particular trend has continued to the present day?

Richard:    Yes. Under Charlie Wilson I became Features Editor and then Assistant Editor in charge of features–arts, leisure, that side of things–so I was number four or five on the paper, but eventually I got sick of Murdoch. I could have stayed there forever, no doubt, but I decided that by that point I didn’t want to be the editor of a national newspaper for various reasons and I didn’t want to work for Murdoch any more so I resigned without anything to go to. But it was the summer when the Sunday Correspondent and the Independent on Sunday were launched, so I went to join the launch staff of the IOS as Sports Editor for the first six months, then I edited the Sunday Review for 2 or 3 years. Editing the Sunday Review was the most satisfying job I could possibly have had in journalism because I could do anything. It was a very, very flexible thing. The only thing people expected of it was to be surprised and pleased.

Simon:    It was a very good magazine which I read avidly.

Richard:    Writers like Tim de Lisle and Zoe Heller worked for it. But then while I was doing that the Sports Editor lost somebody who was going to Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics and he said, “Do you want a busman’s holiday?” He knew I loved sport, always have done. “Do you want to go and do some features at the Games?” I said yes and did the Olympics for a month and finally discovered what I should have been doing for all of my life. I came back and said, “Can I be a sports writer instead of editing the magazine?” and that was it! So I’ve done far more sports reporting really in the last ten years than I’ve done writing about music in the last 30 odd years.

Simon:    One thing I would like to ask you about is when the UK rock glossy revolution happened in the mid-1980s I would have thought it would have been tailor-made for someone with your talents and experience. I know you have done some writing for the glossies over the last decade and a half.

Richard:    By which you mean Q…

Simon:   And Mojo and so on…

Richard:    I never wanted to go back into music full-time. Now, the further away I get from writing about it the more I listen, not that I ever didn’t listen, but I just find myself buying albums–I don’t get free records anymore–and I listen all the time, and one of the things I feel quite strongly about is that writing about sport is a lot easier than writing about music.

Simon:    I was going to ask you about that because as someone who has been a football reporter and also written about music, I wonder if you find them different beasts.

Richard:    Very, very different. With sport you are not trying to convey the abstract all the time, not trying to tell people what colour a note is. I found writing about music…eventually I didn’t exactly run out of words, but I had a sort of exhaustion and I wanted to stop or cut right down on that. But with sport you always get a result, it happens in front of you, it’s physical, you can see it. Sport reveals character so it’s interesting to write about. The way people play a game is generally the way they are as a person and you can’t say that about music. Stan Getz made the most beautiful sound in the history of music but he was the biggest bastard God ever created and you can’t correlate the two things at all. Hendrix and Coltrane made very violent music but they were very peaceful men, so you can’t write about their music in terms of them or them in terms of their music. It would be very, very misleading.

Simon:    What do you think about the Marxist critic like Terry Eagleton who feels that football, for instance, has been the most damaging issue or obstacle to social progress because men like you and me and millions of other men, principally, sublimate all their energies into this rather inconsequential pursuit?

Richard:    He may very well have a point. It’s a sort of opiate of the masses. But there’d always be something given the development of the consumer society. You could say the same about shopping; I think shopping is probably far more damaging than football in that respect. Shopping’s a sport now, isn’t it? It’s a kind of sport and an entertainment. More people do shopping than go to football matches, but largely for the same reasons: to fill our time with something enjoyable.

Simon:    In fact, last Sunday, I was travelling in a taxi through north Manchester quite early, and I saw hordes of cars. I thought it was huge gathering of the Catholics of North Manchester gathering for an early mass. But no it was a car boot sale, the new religion maybe.

Richard:    I like the fact that sport, like the best music, has an element of indeterminacy to it. You don’t know what’s going to happen when you walk in, unlike a film. The outcome of the film has been determined by some idiot scriptwriter.

Simon:    And also, these days, by audiences at test screenings, which is depressing.

Richard:    Terribly depressing. With sport you really don’t know what’s going to happen. You walk into an empty stadium and for the next five hours it will be filled by 100,000 people and something fantastic will happen. I love that whole sensation; I like writing about it–it’s never the same twice. People care about it so they want to talk about. I don’t just do football; I do all sorts of things with enormous pleasure, and because I drive around a lot I can listen to even more music in quite good conditions, in a car.

Simon:    The CD player in the car is a great thing isn’t it…

Richard:    And I still try to listen to as much music as possible, but I am not competent to judge death metal or hip hop.

Simon:    You maybe mean nu-metal!

Richard:    I mean nu-metal, yes! Now I’ve a son of 15 years old who lends me his Rage Against the Machine and My Vitriol CDs.

Simon:    Rage are Interesting, I think.

Richard:    Yes, it’s all interesting but I don’t like it very much. Yet I do feel there is as much good stuff out now as there ever was, if not more.

Simon:    It’s also because the industry is now geared up to re-issue, re-package, re-sell in an irresistible way. I bought Neil Young’s Decade the other day, three LPs now in a two CD set.

Richard:    And you’ve probably got everything on it

Simon:    But you can’t resist it. I want that to play in the car!

Richard:    I came back from Japan from the football World Cup having to throw away trousers, shoes, all kinds of things, in order to get all the CDs in…and I’ve got almost all the stuff, beautiful re-packages and so on!

Simon:    It’s an extraordinary trick the recording industry has managed to pull off…

Richard:    I do find with music–music has always moved me. That was the important thing about it, but it moves me even more than ever now. I think I’m more likely to be touched by it.

Simon:    Just two or three closing questions. Would you be interested in commenting on Simon Frith’s assessment of you as the best pop writer on this side of the Atlantic. Do you feel as if this is praise indeed?

Richard:    Yes. In my time I was right more often than anybody else. I was not wrong very much. If that is the criterion then fair enough. I think Nick Kent was a wonderful writer, Charlie Murray was a wonderful writer, Michael Watts was, a few others…I don’t know if I was as good as that. They somehow got themselves into a position where they could devote the time to concentrating on long pieces very successfully and I never did that. I don’t think that I had a portfolio nearly as good as theirs. When I did Long Distance Call, that was an attempt to adjust that. I tried to find the things that had lasted and add some new ones and give an account of myself as a music critic.

Simon:    There was also–although there isn’t a cynical note to your writing–that slight snipe about NME picking up on the Elvis piece, a piece of fiction in fact. That would have been a dream session with Jerry Wexler and so on… [The piece referred to here is a fictional account of Presley returning to the recording studio in the mid-1970s with an all-time great production team and a gathering of red-hot session-men to lay down some new, high quality material, a genuine case of what might've been--Simon.]

Richard:    It was a lovely thing to write. You could do that for everybody, but nobody had at that point. I really enjoyed that. That was when I was at Time Out and was writing a column for Ray Coleman. Another one I wish I could find was one I did when “Anarchy in the UK” came out. I did a column that was set in the year 2000 or it might have been 1996, 20 years hence, in the form of inter-office memos from a record company–Virgin A&M Polydor, a multi-corporation of the future–saying can’t we persuade Johnny to leave his Malibu beach-house and his Hollywood actress wife. I’d used Rod Stewart’s life as a template and transposed Johnny Rotten to it…

Simon:    Uncannily true.

Richard:    Uncannily–down to the blonde actress. That was good fun.

Simon:    You’ve mentioned some of the English writers you favour. Are there any Americans you’ve read and enjoyed?

Richard:    Yes, I like Nick Tosches a lot, I like and admire Peter Guralnick, I admire Greil Marcus without always liking what he writes, Robert Christgau, Stanley Booth I like very much, although he does not write that much now. Rhythm Oilis a collection of his pieces. Lots of jazz writers–Nat Hentoff, Leroi Jones, Martin Williams, all those people. Those are the people that I learnt from.

Simon:    In 2002 there is this burgeoning rock print scene, all sorts of things happening. I know that Melody Maker has died which must have given you the most dismal feeling.

Richard:    I was pleased, actually. I thought it should have been put out of its misery quite a long time earlier. I thought it had lost its meaning, lost its purpose. I thought it was sad to see it drifting into just triviality, really. Its time had gone, I’m sorry to say, but there we are. I felt relief.

Simon:    But in terms of the magazines that are now on the shelves, Mojo, Q–there are lots of magazines that cover rock music including NME of course. Do you have any sort of assessment of the state of rock coverage today?

Richard:    I have very little time for anything I read about music at all. Mojo has some good historical pieces and it has some great critical writing as well sometimes, but I think most people have just wandered off into a set of imperatives that aren’t mine. I read about the new Springsteen album and how wonderful it is or how it’s at least a slightly flawed success, and I think there’s one decent track out of 15. What are people doing with their ears? I think they are hearing what they want to hear. They want to think that something is a good idea. Nowadays you are so surrounded by things that are really nothing more than an assembly of attractive ideas. I read about the Coral and I read that they are a mix of Brian Wilson, bits of Burt Bacharach, lots of things that I like. But I know now or I have a pretty shrewd idea–and this is very unfair on the band because they are not that wonderful–what to expect. But I’ve been burnt by that so many times in the last two years by critics writing things like that. I go out and slam down my £15–and it isn’t any good. So there’s nobody actually now who can make me go out and buy a record.

Simon:    No critic?

Richard:    Absolutely not.

Simon:    How has the rise of the net affected your life? Do you think that web coverage of music is…

Richard:    I don’t have an MP3, I don’t do any of that sort of thing at all; probably wish I did.

Simon:    What about e-zines that cover music–do you check any of those out? Perfect Sound Forever, Kinda Muzik, and so on…

Richard:    Spectropop is one that I read on a daily basis. It’s a site originally devoted to early Sixties American pop music–of the Spector, Brill Building type and I just happened upon it about 18 months ago. It’s just absolutely delightful. It’s much, much broader now, all kinds of things can find their way into it. It leads you in wonderful directions and you learn about things you didn’t even know existed within your sphere of interest and sometimes broadening it. So I do read that every day–it’s very good fun. The other website I always read is Rock’s Backpages, Barney Hoskyns’s archival site. But they’re the only ones I look at regularly. If I am pursuing some line of enquiry then I will obviously go to the net. But I do tend to read a lot of biographies. I have got a lot of them waiting to be read, mostly jazz. I just read a big new Chet Baker book, I’ve got Gil Evans waiting. I read Ben Edmonds’s book on Marvin Gaye–most of what I consider to be the best work is in books now.

Simon:    One thing I would like to ask you about is the subject of popular music and the academy. I have worked on a popular music BA for the last eight years. Do you have any feelings about the way academe might be starting to move into this terrain? Is it something you are suspicious of or complimentary of? How do you feel about the meeting of university study and popular music?

Richard:    I don’t really have any view. It’s not the way, the academic way, that I, by and large, listen to music. Perhaps in some ways I wish it was. I would probably write longer pieces. It’s probably because it’s not how I came to it. It’s not how I grew up in it and I am not sure that teaching it to people in that way is a particularly valuable exercise.

Simon:    You don’t see it as a logical extension?

Richard:    Yes, it ‘s a logical extension. It doesn’t mean I have to like it or participate in it. Everything becomes, quite rightly…shopping is a subject of academic study, so why not music? I spent a few days in Nottingham this weekend and one night I just walked around all the places that had been of significance to me and it seemed like a very rich experience, thinking of all these clubs, coffee bars which are other things now. Nottingham’s still a great, lively place, but not in that way. There used to be four or five clubs and I just thought of all the things I’d seen, and I thought of how natural it had been. My response to music is, I suppose, intuitive and visceral rather than academic, even though some of the music I like is quite complex, abstract, dry.

Simon:    One of the things Simon Frith did say in his book Sound Effects, one of the key texts that addressed popular music as a cultural form in the early 1980s, was that most rock critics were interested in the sociology or the culture of the music they were listening to but had little of the apparatus to appreciate the mechanics of rhythm, harmony and melody, the elements that are integral components. I feel when I have returned to and read your stuff in the last few weeks as if you’re quite serious in the way you listen to the music. Would that be fair to say?

Richard:    It would certainly be fair to say that.

Simon:    Do you understand the music?

Richard:    I do, yes, I do. And I’m interested in how it makes me feel. If it was an early Who single, I’m interested in how that made me feel, and I a lot of other kids feel, or what about a Motown record made a lot of us dance at a particular time. But I’m more interested in how it does that musically, I think. That’s the underlying core at it. The way that the backbeat and bass line works, rather than something else. That’s how I listen to music. I listen to the notes. In my time I have also toyed with the violin, the double bass, the piano, the alto saxophone and the cornet. With the wind instruments I learnt, or taught myself, only just enough to know how they worked. I had piano lessons as a child. And I spent a fair amount of time with the violin and bass, playing in school and county youth orchestras. I also sang in various choirs. So with a bit of guitar and a lot of drums/percussion, I think I have a fairly broad-based knowledge of the mechanics of music. That certainly informs, although it does not determine the way I listen to music. That’s really what I’m interested in and perhaps it explains why my real heroes are people like Steve Cropper at Stax, Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson at Motown, and Al Duncan at Chess. Sub-cultural and sociological aspects are always fun, but the only one I was ever really a member of was Mod. And I loved that. That’s still how I feel. I liked hippie music but I never wanted to be more interested in the audience than the musician. That’s probably a lot of what’s happened to music. Not in the case of nu-metal, I suppose, and various others, but clubbing is all about the audience. I’m interested in music that breathes rather than repeats itself according to encoded digital signals.