Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today his music Writers, who was senior editor
Speaker 1: at Crew Magazine in addition to her other accomplishments. Jan, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm good. So there's a new documentary
Speaker 1: on Queen Magazine. Are you happy with it? I am
Speaker 1: happy with it. I mean, I have to say I
Speaker 1: ended up with ulcers of the three years of making it,
Speaker 1: but the end product actually is much better than I
Speaker 1: ever imagined it would be. Well, if you had ulcers
Speaker 1: for three years, that would indicate you were heavily involved
Speaker 1: in the production of the film. H Can you tell
Speaker 1: us more about that? Yeah, I actually wasn't. Initially, I
Speaker 1: was the conduit between J. J. Kramer, whose father was
Speaker 1: Barry Kramer, the founder of the magazine, and Scott Crawford,
Speaker 1: who I had worked with at Heart Magazine. And I
Speaker 1: made the introduction and I thought that was just enough
Speaker 1: until they kept asking me questions, and the questions were
Speaker 1: really bad, like oh, I've got to jump in here
Speaker 1: and say no, no, no, no, this is the way
Speaker 1: it was. So just in increments they pulled me into
Speaker 1: being first a consultant and then a co writer and
Speaker 1: then a co producer, So I ended up having to
Speaker 1: wrangle most of the bands that you see in the
Speaker 1: documentary because honestly, it was time to collect the favors.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like if I had bead on the
Speaker 1: road with Kiss as many times as I have and
Speaker 1: got on stage, then my figured they could speak in
Speaker 1: the documentary. So it was one of those things. I
Speaker 1: just got out all the trading cards and started cashing
Speaker 1: them in. Okay, Well, you you said they had bad
Speaker 1: questions which would indicate a lack of knowledge. You remember
Speaker 1: any of them? Well, I think that they wondered, Like
Speaker 1: they would ask me questions like who is this? Like
Speaker 1: who is Rick Siegel? Who is Dealer? And are these
Speaker 1: people important? You know, the very first pillars of the
Speaker 1: people who founded Cream. So they didn't have this working
Speaker 1: knowledge of that, and I only did because I was there,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean the sad truth about rock journalism
Speaker 1: and maybe rock bands is they eat their young. So
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of us around to ask, so
Speaker 1: it was pretty much me and J. J. Cramer's mother,
Speaker 1: Connie Kramer, who were actually witness this to this. So
Speaker 1: I felt like I had the sacred duty honestly a
Speaker 1: sacred duty to get in there and get it right
Speaker 1: for them. Now you say you wrote the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: had you had any experience in film or was that
Speaker 1: required in this case? It's kind of like it I
Speaker 1: ever written before I went to Cream. No, no, uh no,
Speaker 1: it was It was not. It wasn't like writing the script.
Speaker 1: It was more like fashioning the right questions to elicit
Speaker 1: the stories that I wanted to tell, the things that
Speaker 1: I remembered that were important. And as it went along,
Speaker 1: it started a narrative. Arcs started being creative by actually
Speaker 1: the interviews. It's like the first rule of journalism, Like
Speaker 1: when you go into a story, you can't go with
Speaker 1: any preconceived notions. You have an idea of what you want,
Speaker 1: but you have to let the witnesses speak. And the
Speaker 1: better story was there. Um. It really started to have
Speaker 1: shape when we interviewed Cameron Crowe and he likened Cream
Speaker 1: to a band and with three members. I mean it
Speaker 1: actually had more members and it was more like an
Speaker 1: ensemble cast of friends. But that was a really good
Speaker 1: hook because we could organize the three big personalities that
Speaker 1: really were the foundation of Cream. Berry Kramer, who was
Speaker 1: a pugnacious visionary who picked a fight to get what
Speaker 1: he wanted. Dave Marsh another pugnacious visionary unless your bangs,
Speaker 1: who never took anything seriously but was a covert intellectual.
Speaker 1: So it was this really combination of these three personalities
Speaker 1: that made Cream and the various camps that collected around
Speaker 1: their viewpoints. So that I mean, I like, oh, Cameron
Speaker 1: a big debt for actually making it easier for us.
Speaker 1: And of course Barry and Lester are deceased, so that
Speaker 1: makes it even more difficult. Were there any discussions, arguments,
Speaker 1: disagreements over what the history was, Well, I think that
Speaker 1: people think it's one way, and it really wasn't. I
Speaker 1: think that there's this whole perception of when you're writing
Speaker 1: stuff that comes out of your fingers. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of machinations and how to get the right people,
Speaker 1: or how to get the right acts to cover, or
Speaker 1: or exactly how bombastic and how i'm gonna say glamorous,
Speaker 1: but how exciting it was to be in the presence
Speaker 1: of rock when it was really I'm not gonna say infancy,
Speaker 1: because we really were late sixties early seventies rock, but
Speaker 1: there was this collaborative notion between the bands and the
Speaker 1: journalists and the photographers that we're all doing the same
Speaker 1: thing together and we were going to actually feed off
Speaker 1: of each other. So I thought that was important because
Speaker 1: especially in a time period where you get no access
Speaker 1: or very little access to an artist, then it was
Speaker 1: really it was anything but that. I mean there were
Speaker 1: times when we would take like Leslie West, the guitarists
Speaker 1: from Mountain, and we would convince him to be on
Speaker 1: our cover, but to do that here we had to
Speaker 1: cover him in Whitecastle Hamburgers. So it was like there
Speaker 1: was all these deals struck, but it was all this
Speaker 1: sense of fun, like we felt like we were on
Speaker 1: the same side. And honestly, the difference between the rock
Speaker 1: writers that Cream and the artists were they had better clothes,
Speaker 1: I mean, playing and simple, and probably more money or
Speaker 1: access to more money, yeah, more money than and you
Speaker 1: know all the things that went along with it. But
Speaker 1: it really there wasn't the sense of there in Valhalla
Speaker 1: and we were it was it was really that we
Speaker 1: were all in the same playing field. Well, of course
Speaker 1: this was a heyday, as you say, sort of the
Speaker 1: second wave. We had the British invasion than we had
Speaker 1: album rock and that's when Queen began. And then of
Speaker 1: course it was mega in the early seventies. You had
Speaker 1: access when no one had access. Did it become dere
Speaker 1: gourt you or were you pinching yourself all the time?
Speaker 1: You know? I think I think we had this real
Speaker 1: sense of that they weren't that much different. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: going on on tour with LEDs up and I was
Speaker 1: pinching myself and wishing that they weren't such an assholes
Speaker 1: at times, you know. But but the fact was it
Speaker 1: was that was one that got me. Other than that
Speaker 1: I had actually had a job. There was a bollroom
Speaker 1: and in Detroit called the Granny Ballroom. It was model
Speaker 1: on a film more experiment, you know, like the Bill
Speaker 1: Graham And there's a documentary online about it, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is. So I was the Coca Cola girl there
Speaker 1: for three years, so I actually saw everybody and I
Speaker 1: had to bring them Coca cola. So I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of a little bit slower. What was what were
Speaker 1: the duties of the Coca Cola girl? The biggest duty
Speaker 1: was to make sure no one spiked the Coca Cola's
Speaker 1: because it was those years of dosing, especially when the
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead would play the Grandy Ballroom. So my most
Speaker 1: important job was to keep my eye on the sodas
Speaker 1: because what you would do is because it was such.
Speaker 1: It would be a big night, especially in the summer,
Speaker 1: and you lay out all the drinks and some would
Speaker 1: come along and try to put LSD into the drinks.
Speaker 1: And that happened so many times that that was a
Speaker 1: designated role. Okay, that that begs the question. Were you
Speaker 1: ever dosed? Only once? But not at the Grandy Ballroom
Speaker 1: only there was a festival called the Goose Lake Festival.
Speaker 1: It was the same dosing that felled the Stooges. Uh
Speaker 1: Dave Alexander, the guitar player the Stooges, also got dozed
Speaker 1: and when he got on stage to play with the Stooges,
Speaker 1: he forgot how to play guitar. Had I had a guitar,
Speaker 1: I would have forgotten how to play guitar. But that
Speaker 1: was the only time. No, I was really shrewd about it.
Speaker 1: When you saw your friends babbling, I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: thing about being dosed, you just think you're going to say,
Speaker 1: do you have a grand brain aneurism? You don't think
Speaker 1: you're dose. You just think something is profoundly wrong. So
Speaker 1: that just scared me. Okay. Staying on that same tip,
Speaker 1: even though alcohol really came back in the seventies, were
Speaker 1: you someone who got involved in drugs and alcohol? No,
Speaker 1: I honestly, to be completely real, there are too many
Speaker 1: calories and alcohol because, to quote the Sainted Paul Family,
Speaker 1: he says, rock and roll is never kind to the
Speaker 1: fat boy. Rock and roll is less kind to the
Speaker 1: rock writer. You know, you can't look like someone's mother
Speaker 1: or grandmother or fat cousin. If you're going to interview
Speaker 1: rock bands, You've got to like dress the part. And
Speaker 1: that was always part of it. Okay, Well that begs
Speaker 1: the question once again, are you will you consider yourself
Speaker 1: at that time to be anorexic? Uh? There are days
Speaker 1: I was a little antorexic. Yeah. Um, you know I've
Speaker 1: I've always tried to be you know, trying to be spin.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there were times where I was definitely following
Speaker 1: the Patty Boy diet of two salting crackers and a
Speaker 1: slice of cheese. So yeah I was. And how about today?
Speaker 1: Not today? Not just normal? Okay, So you get a
Speaker 1: gig at the Grandy Ballroom. How old are you? I
Speaker 1: was fifteen? Okay. Where I grew up in Connecticut, you
Speaker 1: couldn't work legally until you were sixteen. What was the
Speaker 1: situation in Michigan? False? I D? Okay, And I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all I went there. You had to be seventeen,
Speaker 1: but I had a friendhood and older sisters, and it
Speaker 1: was you could have idea that didn't have pictures on it.
Speaker 1: You can get in with your school, I D. So
Speaker 1: I got into the ball room with a false I D.
Speaker 1: And I just never told them I wasn't seventeen, okay.
Speaker 1: Two questions to get into the venue. Did you have
Speaker 1: to be seventeen just to work there? Okay? So prior
Speaker 1: to getting this gig at the Grandy Ballroom, how many
Speaker 1: hell active were you in seeing shows? Well? I was.
Speaker 1: The bar was adjacent to the stage, so I could
Speaker 1: I could always have a prince ide to the stage.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm really asking is, prior to working
Speaker 1: at the Grandy Ballroom, were you an avid concertgoer? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I convinced my parents to let me go
Speaker 1: see the Stones in nineteen sixty six, all by myself.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have always all about yourself aline myself.
Speaker 1: I think about that now, like, what the help were
Speaker 1: they thinking and just dropping me off and arena, Um,
Speaker 1: I would go see bands by myself because nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to go with me. Well, I have that same experience.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it at ten, but certainly once you
Speaker 1: hit like fourteen fifteen and later, you know I would.
Speaker 1: I would go and no one want to go, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't stop me. And the other thing that people
Speaker 1: say is I have a friend of his concert promoter
Speaker 1: in Denver. He says, well, he thinks about it throwing
Speaker 1: a party, whereas back then they used to have seats.
Speaker 1: It was like a religious experience more than you know,
Speaker 1: just hanging with the people. Oh yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1: It was like we were one. You know. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like not too continually like conjure up the grateful dead,
Speaker 1: but there was that sense of community that really came
Speaker 1: out of the sixties that we were one. We were
Speaker 1: all in it together. This was holy and actually there's
Speaker 1: like some some kind of information that we're all sharing.
Speaker 1: It's kinda like close encounters of the third kind. We
Speaker 1: all saw mashed potatoes, we all saw mountains that our
Speaker 1: mashed potatoes, So there was there was just something addictive
Speaker 1: about it. And well, a lot of our generations sold
Speaker 1: out after Reagan lowered taxes and legitimized greed. Where did
Speaker 1: that leave you? Um? I had my mom years. I
Speaker 1: actually um got off the road. I think I saw
Speaker 1: another lids up until I got off the road. I
Speaker 1: found out that I was pregnant and thought, okay, you
Speaker 1: cannot be a mom and be a rock writer and
Speaker 1: be on the road. So I actually took the eighties off.
Speaker 1: My daughter was born eighty, and I didn't really I
Speaker 1: came back and wrote like in the mid eighties, and
Speaker 1: then came back completely in ninety one. And were you
Speaker 1: married to your daughter's father? I was yes? And was
Speaker 1: he in the music business? Yes, he owned berserk Lee Records. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: that's Matthew KINGE Coffin. You are still married to him? Yes,
Speaker 1: I am. That's you know, that's very rare, not only
Speaker 1: for people who our generation, but people our age. How
Speaker 1: did you meet him? I was working for a record
Speaker 1: World that was with a minor trade in the in
Speaker 1: the triad of trades and cash box billboard and record World,
Speaker 1: which supposedly had the best charts that's what they said
Speaker 1: Record World. They did say that for so many reasons,
Speaker 1: but we will not explore here. And I was doing
Speaker 1: a column called The Coast and it was deadline and
Speaker 1: I got a tip from Toby Mamas, who now works
Speaker 1: for Alice Cooper. Yeah, I hear from every day, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: And he told me that Journey who had to managers, Um,
Speaker 1: we're actually splitting ways. And I just stuck it in
Speaker 1: the end of my column. No big deal, It wasn't flashy.
Speaker 1: I just because I had an industry column. So the
Speaker 1: next week I get a call from Rogerson Cowen and
Speaker 1: they have a client, Matthew King Kaufman, and he wants
Speaker 1: to take whoever wrote the item about um the Journey
Speaker 1: managers to lunch because he had just had lunch with
Speaker 1: them and they didn't tell him that that he that
Speaker 1: they were breaking up. So he came down to l
Speaker 1: A from Berkeley and took me to lunch and we
Speaker 1: hit it off. He uh, he used to go to
Speaker 1: the track. I used to go to the track. And
Speaker 1: he had this contraption called a bio later and I
Speaker 1: definitely have a metaphysical bend. And the bileage showed you
Speaker 1: your virhythms. But also seemed like JFK had three critical
Speaker 1: days in the day died. So I was fascinated, like
Speaker 1: I wanted to see the day I was going to die.
Speaker 1: So he left that lunch and he gave me his violator.
Speaker 1: So fast forward, how many years later? Yeah, still married? Okay,
Speaker 1: so it was essentially an instant romance. No, actually a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: So I had to work work through that, you know.
Speaker 1: I we were friends for about six months and we
Speaker 1: would go to the track and then one day I
Speaker 1: just thought, Wow, I've got something for this guy, Like
Speaker 1: there's there's some chemistry. It's a slow burn. Okay, why
Speaker 1: the track. I had an uncle who had horses, and
Speaker 1: um he taught me how to handicap as a kid.
Speaker 1: And I've always been really good at math, and I
Speaker 1: love astrology, so I always would say, oh, it's just
Speaker 1: horse astrology. If you figure out a horse's patterns much
Speaker 1: like astrology, figure out some of these transits, then you
Speaker 1: can actually be pretty good at predict who's going to
Speaker 1: win at the track. And I was. And Matt grew
Speaker 1: up across from Kilmaco in Maryland and he used to
Speaker 1: go to the track as a kid. So we both
Speaker 1: were handicappers, I mean one of those oddball kind of association.
Speaker 1: So what was your biggest win ever? Enough to buy
Speaker 1: furniture from my living room? And and at this if
Speaker 1: we close your bedding career today in the black or
Speaker 1: the red? Oh, definitely the black. Wo. Yeah, I'm careful
Speaker 1: better and I'm really O C D about my numbers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll ask you, is it fixed or is it not?
Speaker 1: Even if it is, there's certain things when you look
Speaker 1: at a horse. There's a there used to be a
Speaker 1: video tip called the fit of I think It's fit
Speaker 1: racehorse by this woman called Bonnie lead Better, and she
Speaker 1: would show you the physicality of a horse and how
Speaker 1: you you should bet at it that if it has
Speaker 1: certain kind of attributes, or if it had foam in
Speaker 1: his leg or any of those things. So, even if
Speaker 1: it's fixed, which I'm certain it is, you can still
Speaker 1: override that if you look at the condition of horse,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the horse just wants to run, no matter
Speaker 1: what the jockeys thinking. Okay, let's go back to the
Speaker 1: Grandy ball room. So you're the coke girl. How long
Speaker 1: does that last? That loss? About three years? And in
Speaker 1: that three years, you have a desire to get deeper
Speaker 1: into the music business. Well, I would go home after
Speaker 1: after my shift two o'clock in the morning, and I
Speaker 1: would write about what I've seen. I just had a
Speaker 1: sense it was better the second time around. So always
Speaker 1: I was doing this little ad hoc reviews for myself,
Speaker 1: just writing about bands. And right next to the the
Speaker 1: coke counter there was a little kiosk. It was very
Speaker 1: Kramer had a head shop and they sold like papers
Speaker 1: and sundry things, and they sold cream magazines. I wasn't
Speaker 1: there from day one, but I used to say them, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I give you free Coca colas, can I write
Speaker 1: for magazine? And they go, oh yeah, sure. But I
Speaker 1: kept doing that because I was bent and determined that
Speaker 1: I would write for cream magazine because there was not
Speaker 1: the game in town. So yeah, it's funny because and
Speaker 1: I worked in this place called the bird Feeder where
Speaker 1: you said food on the plaza at Snowbird in Utah.
Speaker 1: I would cree favor with the freestyle skiers by giving
Speaker 1: them big ice cream. So it's like the same thing.
Speaker 1: I've never actually had that experience. Okay, so you're staying
Speaker 1: up till two in the morning when you're in high school.
Speaker 1: I am, and your parents totally cool with that. My
Speaker 1: mom was a dancer and she she used to dance
Speaker 1: with jazz bands. So she said to me when I
Speaker 1: was really young, the only thing I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: you is never date a sax player and never try heroin.
Speaker 1: So she was absolutely cool, you know. She They really
Speaker 1: gave me a long leash. You know, they were they
Speaker 1: were kind of Matthew. My husband always says they were
Speaker 1: like Sid and Nancy, you know, because my parents just
Speaker 1: like wild hipsters. So yeah, it was just normal for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when did you do your homework? I did on Sundays. Actually,
Speaker 1: like to this day, I hate Sundays because I had
Speaker 1: to do play catchup. Okay, so you graduate from high school,
Speaker 1: you're still working at the Grandy Ballroom. And then where
Speaker 1: do you end up going to college? I go to
Speaker 1: Wayne State University UM, and I actually that's actually the
Speaker 1: bigger entrance to the Cream because when I was registering,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, unbeknownst he was growing out with
Speaker 1: the art director at Cream, Charlie Oranger, And she says
Speaker 1: to me, I'm just about to break up with them,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got somebody else I have my eye
Speaker 1: and I go, really, why would you? And she goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just not my types. I said,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I actually make a play for him? Um.
Speaker 1: It was very subtle, but that was it. I met
Speaker 1: Charlie Oranger, and that's how I got to Cream. Really
Speaker 1: is that we just started having coffee dates and Um
Speaker 1: eventually brought me over to the offices. So I met
Speaker 1: everybody that way. Okay, did you graduate from college? Eventually?
Speaker 1: I graduated ninety two because I was I finally got
Speaker 1: a job full time at Cream and I couldn't do
Speaker 1: college and Cream that I couldn't do that homework, so
Speaker 1: I dropped out about a year and a half into it.
Speaker 1: And then what was the motivation in the execution of graduating? Well,
Speaker 1: I always felt like I wanted to to actually get
Speaker 1: a degree, But I think the other thing is having
Speaker 1: those ten mom years where I was just really pretty
Speaker 1: much a housewife and learning astrology and playing the horses.
Speaker 1: I thought, I've got to figure out my next act.
Speaker 1: So I went back to school thinking I'd be a
Speaker 1: history teacher. I got a degree in history, and the
Speaker 1: only job I could get besides working for the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party was working at magazine. So I worked at Band
Speaker 1: magazine for a while, and then I just started freelancing
Speaker 1: and then really worked my way back to my you know,
Speaker 1: chop wood carry water before Enlightenment, chop wood carry water
Speaker 1: after Enlightenment. I just became myself again. Okay. And where
Speaker 1: did you get your degree? Cal Berkeley? Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: go back. So you meet Orange or in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind you want to work for queam in
Speaker 1: in front of my mind, I want to work for Cream. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this this is when you're like a freshman that
Speaker 1: this starts to happen. Yeah, I'm a freshman. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how do you drop it on him that, hey, I
Speaker 1: want a connection to the magazine. You know, it was
Speaker 1: just really subtle. He knew I was a writer, and
Speaker 1: I was writing. I mean for myself. I had published
Speaker 1: except for, you know, a couple of things in like
Speaker 1: high school paper, but other than that nothing, And I
Speaker 1: just talked about wanting to be a writer. So he
Speaker 1: lived at the Cream offices. Cream was a series of
Speaker 1: communes for the first like eight years or so, so
Speaker 1: he lived where the offices were very Cramer and Dave
Speaker 1: Marsh lives, so I would go there with them and
Speaker 1: I hit it up. It wasn't so strategic. I mean
Speaker 1: I like to be around people like me. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is that whole misfit outsider aspect of Cream magazine anyway,
Speaker 1: and there was something that connected all the people who
Speaker 1: ended up working there, and I just I really hit
Speaker 1: it off with Dave Marsh immediately, and Barry Kramer scared
Speaker 1: me for the longest time, but you know, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was home. It's funny you mentioned that, because
Speaker 1: that used to be a defining marker, uh, the inside
Speaker 1: outside and the fact that, I mean a person who
Speaker 1: was captain of the football team would never be the
Speaker 1: big Rock fan insider. And now it's all you know.
Speaker 1: You see people going to the Stone show and buying
Speaker 1: five leather jackets. You go, they were not into the
Speaker 1: Stones back when you went in sixty six. I know, right,
Speaker 1: I I think about that, like, especially if I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I've gone to my high school reunions.
Speaker 1: I have not. Oh, I don't recommend it, but well,
Speaker 1: let's float down fascinated. Which reunions have you been to?
Speaker 1: Did you start like right away, I like with the
Speaker 1: five year reunion, I started the ten year and we
Speaker 1: started a ten year so I went to that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with history. I got my degree in history.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing like seeing your appears as a bookmark
Speaker 1: to who you were and who you've become and you
Speaker 1: measure yourself against them, which you which kids always do. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't really think about a sixties something doing that,
Speaker 1: but you still do that. And now it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the false memory syndrome. It's like all the people
Speaker 1: who said they were at Excess Pistols concert, like all
Speaker 1: of the people now say they read cream and they
Speaker 1: always you know, exactly yeah. It's like no, right, and
Speaker 1: you were you were Woodstock too, Yeah, exactly right. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: just so we get some of the geography down. What
Speaker 1: town do you grow up in? A little town called
Speaker 1: later At Village. It's outside of Detroit, Like how far
Speaker 1: from the Renaissance Center, etcetera. Twelve miles because Detroit structured
Speaker 1: on mile roads that yeah, from down so essentially close.
Speaker 1: So if there was like a bus when you were
Speaker 1: a teenager you could take into town. There was a
Speaker 1: bus when I was a teenager, and that's how I
Speaker 1: had to get anywhere because I'm so dyslexic. I didn't
Speaker 1: get my license. So I was nineteen. So yes, I
Speaker 1: took a bus to work and then and then how
Speaker 1: did you get back from the Grande Ballroom? Uh? God
Speaker 1: made hitch hiking or asking asking people for rides. My
Speaker 1: girlfriends and I were like a posse of you know,
Speaker 1: could you give us a ride in those perilous times. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't have cars. None of us drove. Right, It's
Speaker 1: not like today when the kids sixteen and they get
Speaker 1: a car. And Wayne State is how far from Detroit?
Speaker 1: It's about two miles from downtown Detroit. It's an inner
Speaker 1: city college. Okay, So when you're going to Wayne State,
Speaker 1: you're living at home. I'm going at home. Okay. So
Speaker 1: Barry Kramer starts Queen magazine on top of his record store.
Speaker 1: How long after that do you start visiting the offices? Okay?
Speaker 1: His record store was elsewhere down Cass Avenue. It was
Speaker 1: actually a place where it was like a It was
Speaker 1: an old storefront where people used to just live, turned
Speaker 1: into apartment. So Barry lived there and he turned that
Speaker 1: into his offices. So I'm there like it starts in
Speaker 1: marsh of sixty nine and I start going. That was
Speaker 1: Charlie Oranger in August of sixty nine, So I'm there
Speaker 1: from August August nine on. Well, that's essentially the same
Speaker 1: because outside of Michigan there was very little distribution of
Speaker 1: Green magazine at that particular time. But by time you
Speaker 1: get involved, they've already gone to the structure of rural
Speaker 1: living in a house. Now by the time I get involved,
Speaker 1: I'm after class, I'm going to Cream and I'm working,
Speaker 1: and then then Charlie would drive me back Arou. I
Speaker 1: would just stay there, so I'm I'm working until we
Speaker 1: don't move to the horrible and horrible hinterlands until Okay,
Speaker 1: so you live with your parents through this whole time.
Speaker 1: I do up until I'm quasi literally tried, but I'm
Speaker 1: not really like I wouldn't really commit. It just felt
Speaker 1: not morally wrong, just power structure wrong. Um, so I
Speaker 1: would stay there, but I didn't really move out of
Speaker 1: my parents until maybe when we moved to Birmingham in
Speaker 1: nineteen Okay, so it's sixty nine, you're working at Cream.
Speaker 1: How much money are they paying you? Well, if you
Speaker 1: got paid it was which was really twenty five with
Speaker 1: the taxes taken out, someone reminded me, and seventy five,
Speaker 1: even in those days was very little. So you could
Speaker 1: essentially do what live with your parents by cokes, you
Speaker 1: could essentially do that. I got a job at a
Speaker 1: suburban mall um to selling jeans, so I actually outfitted
Speaker 1: the whole staff and jeans and the Alice Cooper group
Speaker 1: if they came by, because we would, you know, we
Speaker 1: I had no compunction, like you know it was, I
Speaker 1: have no this poet. I still a little bad that
Speaker 1: I shoplifted from the store that I actually worked for,
Speaker 1: but I gave I gave jeans away to everybody on
Speaker 1: the staff. And how long did you have two gigs? Oh?
Speaker 1: I had two gigs, probably about four years. And selling jeans?
Speaker 1: Was that the only one? Or did you have something else?
Speaker 1: You know that that was the only one I would.
Speaker 1: I would go there in the morning, opened up the store,
Speaker 1: and then I would go to cream and I'd come
Speaker 1: back and close the store. So I pretty much was
Speaker 1: on the treadmill. Wow. How many hours a week were
Speaker 1: you working at the store? Oh, like I guess probably
Speaker 1: between twenty and thirty all day Saturday, all day Sunday. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you when you get to Queam, what is the
Speaker 1: status of the magazine in the operation? Well, when I
Speaker 1: get there, it's moving from that news printy thing. It
Speaker 1: was actually has actual covers that has curt distribution. Um
Speaker 1: how I how I really got there? And the door
Speaker 1: wasn't for writing. It was because I worked at that
Speaker 1: boutique and we sold T shirts and I said, why
Speaker 1: don't you let me create a T shirt line for
Speaker 1: you and I'll just sell them under under the counter.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a percent of the profits. And I've
Speaker 1: got a little sister and she's got a cadre of friends.
Speaker 1: Why didn't I send them door to door selling cream
Speaker 1: T shirts? And that's really essentially how I got my
Speaker 1: job because I created a T shirt. Ok what did
Speaker 1: the T shirts have? The famous boy how and who
Speaker 1: created boy Howdy? Oh? Our chrome created it before my time,
Speaker 1: but but it was it was amazing something I think
Speaker 1: he regretted because he only got paid fifty dollars for
Speaker 1: the logo. So I had a lot of situations. I
Speaker 1: once spent night a night playing guitars with him. It
Speaker 1: was very interesting and seventy three, but that's a different digression.
Speaker 1: So you're how many of these T shirts do you
Speaker 1: think you're sold? Oh? I probably sold a couple, maybe
Speaker 1: a thousand, and that's yeah. And then well it was
Speaker 1: a really popular mall store. I mean we had like
Speaker 1: so much traffic. We really did a big business. And
Speaker 1: then my kid's sister, who's very entrepreneurial, rounded up all
Speaker 1: of her friends and I think we paid them like
Speaker 1: twenty bucks each. So then then we sold them through
Speaker 1: the magazine, and then it actually got to be as
Speaker 1: big as it is. I mean even today people want them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I finally threw mine now because they were
Speaker 1: more holes than material. Okay, you're doing this, you're working
Speaker 1: two gigs, you're selling the T shirts. What does that
Speaker 1: evolved into? Um, they give me the job as a
Speaker 1: subscription kid, which I was now fulfilling subscriptions, not a
Speaker 1: writing job, like tapping into these entrepreneurials like like kind
Speaker 1: of them. I mean they did that. And then I
Speaker 1: started selling small magazines to small dealers, so I handled
Speaker 1: all of that part and then I can do reviews
Speaker 1: at night, um, which I did a couple and they
Speaker 1: were incredibly bad and terrible. And then finally I had
Speaker 1: my break when Dave Marsh took me to to a
Speaker 1: press conference where Smokey Robinson was retiring and didn't tell
Speaker 1: me I had to write about it, So it was
Speaker 1: really it was accidental on their part. For me, I
Speaker 1: always planned to write for Cream. I just I just
Speaker 1: didn't think it was gonna take me almost two years
Speaker 1: to do it. Do you think that the factor was
Speaker 1: were a woman in a boys club worked against you? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: I always worked for me. Um. I think there's great
Speaker 1: power and being underestimated and getting away with really really
Speaker 1: rude questions or really incisive ones and people don't see
Speaker 1: it coming. I think the thing was is I think
Speaker 1: being able to write about bands are spoke bands. It
Speaker 1: was a day where they thought most reporters were groupies,
Speaker 1: so they would really act out or not take it seriously,
Speaker 1: and I would always present to my story and it
Speaker 1: was it was funnier because of that, because I definitely
Speaker 1: have a comic bent. So I think always worked for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell the fulm Smokey Robinson article story, which is delineated
Speaker 1: or shown in the movie. Um. I went with Dave
Speaker 1: Marsh and Charlie Orangered down to a hotel in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and with a lot of hoopla, hometown hero Smokey Robinson
Speaker 1: announces that he's leaving the Miracles, a heartbreaking event for
Speaker 1: any Detroit kid because he was like poet laureate, he
Speaker 1: was the man, and I was sad. I was a
Speaker 1: huge Miracles fan. So Dave took me because of that,
Speaker 1: but he didn't tell me. He says he did, but
Speaker 1: he didn't tell me. I had to write about it.
Speaker 1: So I go back to my parents house where I'm living,
Speaker 1: and he calls me about o'clock at night, and he goes,
Speaker 1: where's that story? And I go, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He goes, you know that story about Smoky And I go,
Speaker 1: there is no story. What story? So he says you
Speaker 1: have to write it? And I go, I don't have
Speaker 1: any Miracle albums. So it goes get out over here.
Speaker 1: So I then by then I'm nineteen, I have a car.
Speaker 1: I drive to the Cream office and I pick up
Speaker 1: his Miracle's albums. I listened to him all night long
Speaker 1: and stay up all night long and write an open
Speaker 1: letter to Smokey Robinson, which was the cover story. So
Speaker 1: my first time out, it's a cover story and it's
Speaker 1: you know, please please slee smoking, don't go okay they
Speaker 1: all you know, they also say in the movie it
Speaker 1: was a great letter. So the door is now open.
Speaker 1: What's your next step? Well, next step set, I'm doing reviews. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm still working as a subscription kid, like eight hours
Speaker 1: a day, ten hours a day, but I'm writing reviews
Speaker 1: at night and they're better, Like you know, Lester's helping me. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm writing them kind of in a style of j. R.
Speaker 1: Young was up. He's still alive, but he was a
Speaker 1: rolling stone UM reviewer and he always made them into
Speaker 1: a little story. So all my reviews became little stories,
Speaker 1: little vignettes. And I did that for a while, and
Speaker 1: you know, I just I got all the girls stories,
Speaker 1: you know, like I got like Dionne Warwick or Carly Simon.
Speaker 1: And one day let's just said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: unfair to you. We're ghetto wise in you. We've got
Speaker 1: to get you out of this teenage girl ghetto. So
Speaker 1: they started giving me like bat you like. I started
Speaker 1: getting heavy metal bands and stories, you know, led zep one.
Speaker 1: So that was how funny, let's see the girl in
Speaker 1: the short skirt write about metal bands. So you know,
Speaker 1: I was playing against type. But that actually I really
Speaker 1: didn't mind, like anything that someone else didn't want. I
Speaker 1: took because I wanted to get published. And did you
Speaker 1: like all of this music you were reviewing and writing about? Well?
Speaker 1: I did, I actually did. I mean, I really love
Speaker 1: hard music. I love the MC five, I liked the
Speaker 1: students a lot. Um. I actually had a great love
Speaker 1: for like Grand Funk Railroad. You know, I really did
Speaker 1: like that kind of meat and potatoes, bone headed rock
Speaker 1: for I still do actually. Okay, so uh, when is
Speaker 1: the first time you go on the road for cream? Um?
Speaker 1: I think it was seventy two. I go on the
Speaker 1: road with Steve Miller and we go to a couple
Speaker 1: of days in Ohio. Who's paying for that? Well, I
Speaker 1: think it was Capital Records at the time. That was
Speaker 1: when they would, you know, people would put the bill
Speaker 1: for everything, you know, the days of like showering you
Speaker 1: with with ephemera and lobster dinners. And was there a
Speaker 1: wink wink? Is cam't be a negative article? No, it
Speaker 1: wasn't at all. Actually he was. He was a really
Speaker 1: good teacher for a lot of things. If that was
Speaker 1: the first one, it was really good, Like he had
Speaker 1: a brother who was a heroin attic and he told
Speaker 1: me all about it. And when I didn't put in
Speaker 1: the story, I saw him. Lady goes, well, what I
Speaker 1: gave you an exclusive? Why didn't you use it? I
Speaker 1: think I didn't know that you could be that brutal
Speaker 1: at the time. I mean, I was just finding my
Speaker 1: sea legs. So no, he was good. He also I
Speaker 1: remember him making a pass at me and I'm saying, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I have a boyfriend, and he said, well, that was
Speaker 1: just a test. And I said, are we out right?
Speaker 1: And he goes, no, How could you actually sleep with
Speaker 1: somebody that you were doing a story on and think
Speaker 1: that you could stick a microphone in their face the
Speaker 1: next day and actually get something. So I mean that
Speaker 1: was a good cautionary tale anyway. So um, I thank
Speaker 1: them for a lot. And was your style to use
Speaker 1: a cassette recorder? Yeah? I took notes and a cassette recorder. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm such a spoon vendor. I've always had two tape
Speaker 1: recorders with me at all times. What kind of tape
Speaker 1: recorders were they? A little sony cassette? I still own
Speaker 1: them today. Okay, okay, So if you let's say you
Speaker 1: went on the road with Steve Miller. How many cassettes
Speaker 1: would you end up with? Oh my god, Well I
Speaker 1: would just because I overdo things anyway. I would take
Speaker 1: six of them and just just keep them talking, because
Speaker 1: you really don't know what's a good quote. I think
Speaker 1: when you're learning how to do journalism, you don't know
Speaker 1: what's important. So you just record everything and and you
Speaker 1: know the story emerges, but you know what if you
Speaker 1: miss it? So I think the worst part about journalism
Speaker 1: was always transcribing the tapes. Okay, so if you're on
Speaker 1: the road with Steve Miller, there's obviously a sit down
Speaker 1: at some point, but there must be interaction in between,
Speaker 1: and you're not recording that, are you know, you're taking
Speaker 1: notes on Thatt like we were in Cleveland. They went
Speaker 1: to his cousin's house for dinner, you know. So there's
Speaker 1: all those cute little moments, and you learn to use
Speaker 1: those because everything is a metaphor, and every object you
Speaker 1: see and every reaction that someone has to something that's
Speaker 1: not mostly a rock question like a quiz show question,
Speaker 1: is where the really more important stuff is. It's like
Speaker 1: you see the nature of the person who makes the music.
Speaker 1: Then somehow informs the music in a much more interesting way.
Speaker 1: So I've really been more of a forensic object reporter,
Speaker 1: where I will I'll talk about somebody in terms to
Speaker 1: their objects, or how they act or how they At
Speaker 1: one point was how how a man treated up Jesse
Speaker 1: Mail and how he treated a waitress. You know, because
Speaker 1: everything is everything? Is it? Quaintly used to say in
Speaker 1: the seventies, right, So if you're on the road with
Speaker 1: Steve Miller, you the only writer on the road with Steve. Okay,
Speaker 1: the magazine came out monthly. Needles just say. Life goes
Speaker 1: up by daily. So there were certain times where you
Speaker 1: would write or do something and by time the magazine
Speaker 1: has produced, your stuff is not included. Your stuff is included. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, would you ever write something that
Speaker 1: ended up on the cutting room floor? Never? Never? Never?
Speaker 1: And to what degree would they editors alter what you wrote?
Speaker 1: Not much? I mean, you know, we we were all
Speaker 1: pretty like like I read some of that stuff, like
Speaker 1: I'm complete piling an anniversary issue to go out, go
Speaker 1: out with the documentary, and I'm like going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: really we wrote that. It's not just me. It's like
Speaker 1: so I look at some of my stuff and I cringed,
Speaker 1: but I look at other stuff and go, wow, I
Speaker 1: was pretty fearless. I can't believe I I wrote that.
Speaker 1: But no, Um, I think the thing was it was
Speaker 1: such a collaborative, great working environment, like a think tank,
Speaker 1: that if we needed help, we would talk to the
Speaker 1: prison next to us. We're really small, We're all really
Speaker 1: close and insular. So if I was having trouble in
Speaker 1: a story, I'd go to Marshaw, I'd go to Leicester
Speaker 1: VN Edmonds and say, hey, could you help me on this?
Speaker 1: So so no, it was never okay. So you break
Speaker 1: in with Steve. Who's your next big act? Oh? Rick
Speaker 1: Wakeman's my next big Rick Wakeman. So he's already left, Yes,
Speaker 1: doing the doing the Caepe stuff and all that other
Speaker 1: stuff is not really a typical cream magazine or coal.
Speaker 1: So tell us that story well, because because the thing was,
Speaker 1: we would always like to put somebody in the situation
Speaker 1: and let I mean, we would choose for personalities like
Speaker 1: he was a great recontour. He was just funny as hell.
Speaker 1: And I did this one actually with Cameron Crowe and
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember we three of us who had
Speaker 1: went down to have lunch, and he it was just
Speaker 1: like a boozy lunch and it was super funny. I
Speaker 1: recorded that used none of that. And then later I
Speaker 1: went to his room and I remember this so vividly
Speaker 1: because it was one of those, oh my god, write
Speaker 1: of passage things. He answers the door and a towel,
Speaker 1: and I go, all right, what and I tell him
Speaker 1: to could put some clothes on it. He won't just
Speaker 1: a funk with me, right, not to make a move,
Speaker 1: but just actually leverage the power of the interview. And
Speaker 1: it was But again, this is what you would put
Speaker 1: in if you were a more season journalists. I don't
Speaker 1: think I even put in that he wouldn't put clothes on,
Speaker 1: which is really ridiculously stupid of me. You know, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: where I left out was more interesting than I put
Speaker 1: in at that point. And by your own choice, did
Speaker 1: you ever have boyfriends in this world, whether they be
Speaker 1: stars or other business people? Are you loyal to Charlie? No?
Speaker 1: I was? I was. I was like monogamous. And the
Speaker 1: other part was who had time to meet people? Because
Speaker 1: we were such a small staff, we really didn't do
Speaker 1: anything to go to the office like we worked. Maybe
Speaker 1: eighteen hours a day, and when we went out, we
Speaker 1: tended to go out on mass like we would go
Speaker 1: see a band together, like everybody would go and um,
Speaker 1: we socialized together. There was really very little life outside
Speaker 1: of Cream. You know. I was really monogamous. And Okay,
Speaker 1: Rick Wakeman, ultimately you work with led Zeppelin and Leonard Skinner.
Speaker 1: But before we get to those stories, anybody in between memorable. Um,
Speaker 1: the Kiss Star is memorable because I can never believe
Speaker 1: they let me perform with them. Let's start from the game.
Speaker 1: What year was the kiss story? That was? So I'm
Speaker 1: probably skipping a lot of other stories, but that was
Speaker 1: that was really memorable. Okay, But rock and Roll All
Speaker 1: Night from the live album has been a hit. Well,
Speaker 1: actually it happened when I went to the story. It
Speaker 1: was the night after they recovered they record Alive, their
Speaker 1: big breakout live albums. Okay, okay, so it wasn't released yet,
Speaker 1: it wasn't released. Okay. Were you a Kiss fan? Well,
Speaker 1: I was a really huge Kiss idea fan I had.
Speaker 1: I had gone to London to covering David Essex and
Speaker 1: one of those many things blocked On, which was an
Speaker 1: amazing song, and I came back to New York. I
Speaker 1: had a layover because there was no nonstops to Detroit
Speaker 1: and I went to some narest forum and Kiss was
Speaker 1: one of the speakers. They run on this little panel
Speaker 1: with Richard Robinson and Danny Fields and Wayne County. It
Speaker 1: was it was about gender in rock and roll, and
Speaker 1: they all switched around their name tags and they would
Speaker 1: answer every every question with its only rock and roll.
Speaker 1: But I like it because that Stone song had just
Speaker 1: come out and I thought, this is hilarious. I can't
Speaker 1: believe they're not breaking character. This is really wonderful. We
Speaker 1: have to cover it. I get back to Cream, but
Speaker 1: I saw this band like like, you know, they they
Speaker 1: have a record out, and you know, they're just like Nightmares.
Speaker 1: And everybody said, oh no, no, they're just like New
Speaker 1: York doal clones. That's they're just trash their cartoons and
Speaker 1: go no, no, we got to cover them. And I
Speaker 1: remember bed Edmonds telling me, cover you cover them, You
Speaker 1: want to cover them? You right it? So I created
Speaker 1: this this rock like Kiss comic, a comic strip panel
Speaker 1: without takes from Dressed to Kill, and that was how
Speaker 1: we first got them in there. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just pressed hard to get kissed in there because
Speaker 1: I just have this idea, even though I didn't love
Speaker 1: the music, it was like an idea whose time had come,
Speaker 1: and it was just so comic book and so I
Speaker 1: don't know, so death of art that I thought we
Speaker 1: could make fun of them, which pretty much did right
Speaker 1: although after you left it seemed to be all kissing
Speaker 1: Cream magazine. But prior to going on stage with Kiss,
Speaker 1: what was your relationship with them? Or was at the
Speaker 1: very beginning? Um, when I met them at that panel
Speaker 1: and then um, they would play Detroit all the time.
Speaker 1: And then I got this idea of doing a kiss comics,
Speaker 1: which it was Kissed Comics with a K O K
Speaker 1: K O M I K and I did that. So
Speaker 1: I went and talked to him then and we got
Speaker 1: really friendly because I don't know, there was just we're
Speaker 1: all the same age, we're all coming up together. I
Speaker 1: think they were making like a hundred bucks a week
Speaker 1: and we were making so we just had this camaraderie,
Speaker 1: like I just felt like, I feel like Andie Dickinson
Speaker 1: in the rat pack with them. Really, so tell us
Speaker 1: the famous story about going on stage. Um, there used
Speaker 1: to be a guy who worked there Um, Larry Larry
Speaker 1: who was Neil Bogart Castle Blanka Records, because you're having
Speaker 1: to write a good book. He died of just a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Forty Larry Harris, Larry Harris and Um,
Speaker 1: he was always bringing bands over to Cream and he
Speaker 1: was he was just a lot of fun. And I
Speaker 1: called him on one day, um, and I said, Um,
Speaker 1: Connie Cramer and I had this idea Barry's wife because
Speaker 1: there was a story in and Esquire Blair Sobel had
Speaker 1: done about being and I get so Connie and I
Speaker 1: one night, working late read it and she says, do
Speaker 1: you think you could do that? And I go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do that with Kiss? Right? And I go
Speaker 1: yeah with Kiss. So I called up Larry Benjamin the
Speaker 1: next day and I said, could I go on stage
Speaker 1: with Kiss? And he goes what, I go, No, can
Speaker 1: I go on stage with Kiss? And he said yes,
Speaker 1: but you can't call him a glitterband? Like go, oh,
Speaker 1: no problem, I won't call him a glitterban. Okay. So
Speaker 1: they come to town maybe week later, and I go
Speaker 1: to sound check to learn their moves because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on stage with them, right, And when I meet
Speaker 1: the band members who I know not well but I know.
Speaker 1: I say, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna go and stay
Speaker 1: with you, and they think I'm going to cover the band.
Speaker 1: They don't know. No one's told them I'm going to
Speaker 1: go on stage with them, and they look at me
Speaker 1: like I'm crazy. So so next morning, after they record
Speaker 1: their album, we go to Johnstown, Pennsylvania on a little
Speaker 1: prop plane and there I am they outfit me. Then
Speaker 1: I then like mother hands. Then they're into it and
Speaker 1: we're gonna all be in this together and they're gonna
Speaker 1: fix me up, and they, you know, they take turns
Speaker 1: putting their makeup and they argue like, I'm looking too
Speaker 1: much like June Simmons because he's he's like putting his
Speaker 1: bat wings on me. And you know, Ace Freely is
Speaker 1: making fun of because I don't know how to put
Speaker 1: makeup on because I never wore foundations. So but it
Speaker 1: was great. I have to say it changed my life
Speaker 1: because I understood the addictive nature of what happens once
Speaker 1: amazon stage and that surge of energy that you get
Speaker 1: from being on stage. I understood at that moment why
Speaker 1: people do what they do and why they can't give
Speaker 1: it up, and I think that story not for the notoriety,
Speaker 1: but more for that actual recognition of why why musicians
Speaker 1: do that with has like really served me for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. Okay, so how long did you
Speaker 1: take them to make you up? Oh? Like twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes longer. It takes them a long time even today,
Speaker 1: like I just covered well last year I covered them
Speaker 1: and their End of the World tour. They've been there
Speaker 1: for two hours. It is really an intense process of
Speaker 1: stages upon stages of making up. And at what point
Speaker 1: do you go on stage? Well, I'm thinking I'm doing
Speaker 1: the whole show in my innocence, so they go on stage.
Speaker 1: I tried to go after them, all dressed up just
Speaker 1: like them, you know, and the road manager post May goes, no,
Speaker 1: you got you got the last song. So I had
Speaker 1: to watch the whole show with the jitters like I'm
Speaker 1: just shredding Kleenex. Then I'm nervous, like I'm all full
Speaker 1: of gravato. I'll do it, you know. When I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go and do the whole show, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I was thinking. So when Rocket Roll All
Speaker 1: Night comes on, they pushed me out there, give me
Speaker 1: this really this red guitar. I think it's offender, and
Speaker 1: Paul tells me, like where low really low looks sexier
Speaker 1: that way. And again they're like mother hands watching me
Speaker 1: like I'm their kid at a recital, and it's so funny.
Speaker 1: But I realized, which is I just made this realization
Speaker 1: the other day. I was thinking about this that nobody
Speaker 1: in that crowd in Johnston, Pennsylvania knew there was an
Speaker 1: extra member of Kiss. They're like, I never heard about it,
Speaker 1: No one wrote, it was in the paper. It was
Speaker 1: like it was like some kind of big blooper. And
Speaker 1: the only way I ever knew about it is because
Speaker 1: I wrote about it later, you know, afterwards. But that
Speaker 1: realization just cracked me up. And it was like if
Speaker 1: if a tree falls in the forest and there's no
Speaker 1: one there to hear, did it really fall? Did it?
Speaker 1: It was just all mocked. Okay, so what do you do?
Speaker 1: During the number you were on stage? I actually had
Speaker 1: an open mic. I sang with them and I danced around.
Speaker 1: I danced behind behind Paul, and Paul has told me later,
Speaker 1: he goes, I forgot you were there. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I looked me. It was like another me like a
Speaker 1: big mini mouse singing. And of course anybody who's seeing
Speaker 1: Kiss knows they wear these gigantic platforms. Did you have
Speaker 1: a pair of platforms? I did. I did anyway, so
Speaker 1: I just wear my own I actually had. I had
Speaker 1: the right the right stuff except for the jewelry. I
Speaker 1: was definitely right in line with their fashion statement. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the experience and you have the insight
Speaker 1: still continuing, you go back to write the story. Do
Speaker 1: you realize the impact the story will have both for
Speaker 1: readers who are fans of Kiss and for you personally.
Speaker 1: I just think it's another story. I was always about
Speaker 1: high concept stories, like I've done other high concept stories before,
Speaker 1: so I just thought it was like the George Limp
Speaker 1: something like nobody would even notice. It would just be
Speaker 1: another story. How I knew it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: And I swear some of the best things that ever
Speaker 1: happened to me was the Bale Musicians Guide wanted to
Speaker 1: license it, and I thought, oh my god, blind kids
Speaker 1: will actually see what that's like. So to me, that's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why that one just really touches my heart,
Speaker 1: but it did. Yeah, that's like the story that's just
Speaker 1: reverberated around the world, like you know, just I got
Speaker 1: to do it. So okay. One thing that always went
Speaker 1: through my brain during that era had the line the
Speaker 1: maiden form bra, which of course was the line from
Speaker 1: the ad, but at that point in time, no one
Speaker 1: in the demo Warren made in form bra, right, right,
Speaker 1: that's so true. Well, it's because I grew up on
Speaker 1: like fashion magazines. It's like, do you remember the ads, Belie.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't remember that, but girls remember the ad was
Speaker 1: these women would wear bras and they would wake up
Speaker 1: in these odd places like at the symphony or in
Speaker 1: the office, and they'd be wearing like a pencil skirt
Speaker 1: and be wearing just a bra and the top. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that, yeah, of course. Okay, so I dreamt
Speaker 1: that I was on stage with kissing my man form bra,
Speaker 1: which I wasn't wearing. But the fact what was it
Speaker 1: was like such a great hook. Oh it was great. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Uh So you're a led Zeppelin fan from the beginning.
Speaker 1: I'm such a led Zeppin fan. When I worked at
Speaker 1: the Grandi Ballroom, I was a big yard Bird Birds fan.
Speaker 1: And one weekend I'm working there and this new band
Speaker 1: who never no one ever heard of was led Zeppelin,
Speaker 1: So no was at the at the venue, like no
Speaker 1: one knew who they were, so no one showed up.
Speaker 1: By the second night, it was like wall to wall
Speaker 1: people like words spread like wildfire. They were amazing like
Speaker 1: they were, they looked beautiful, they played like it was
Speaker 1: just like like sound like sound just broke through. This's
Speaker 1: like that where mind meet Spotty. It was a trans
Speaker 1: formative experience for me. Um. And then when they came back.
Speaker 1: I remember taking my break during they're set and getting
Speaker 1: on stage with them so I could hear them better.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I saw this picture of
Speaker 1: me like I've got like my elbows on Jimmy Page's
Speaker 1: amp and I'm just like, you know, like angelically looking
Speaker 1: like watching this every mood. So yeah, they were like
Speaker 1: my van And what's what's your favorite Zeppelin album? Physical Graffiti?
Speaker 1: I go back and fat between Physical Graffiti and the
Speaker 1: first Physical Graffiti if no other reason's got ten years gone,
Speaker 1: which I can I know, I know, well, I love
Speaker 1: the first one because I think that base, that bubbling
Speaker 1: bass like it's being played under water, unbelievable too. Even
Speaker 1: today it's still unbelievable to me, and they were just
Speaker 1: so mysterious. Okay, so how do you end up interviewing them?
Speaker 1: The first time I interview them there, Um, I just
Speaker 1: think that one of those things that nobody else wanted
Speaker 1: to do. It is odd as that is. And they're
Speaker 1: playing Detroit and I interview them, um backstage at Olympia
Speaker 1: where they were playing. There was no big deal. It
Speaker 1: was just, you know, it was just a regular rock interview.
Speaker 1: I wasn't on the road with them, um. And then
Speaker 1: later on I got on the road with them for um.
Speaker 1: I forgot what album it was, but that was when
Speaker 1: they were holed up in the in the Plaza hotel
Speaker 1: for for like weeks upon weeks and I went for
Speaker 1: like probably four days, so we'd fly out to various
Speaker 1: cities and come back and that was. That was like again,
Speaker 1: not a big deal, like in terms of it being
Speaker 1: bigger than life. Yes, But it wasn't until my third
Speaker 1: time where it got really odd. It was one of
Speaker 1: those almost famous moments where to me, Page didn't want
Speaker 1: to do the interview even though it was for a
Speaker 1: cover story. So I had to dog him for five days,
Speaker 1: like ask because I have an interview because I have
Speaker 1: an interview, and on the last day before I was
Speaker 1: going to go home, they finally granted it to me,
Speaker 1: but only in the provision that I couldn't speak directly
Speaker 1: to him. I had to speak through an interpreter, so
Speaker 1: I had to ask the questions to the publicist and
Speaker 1: she would translate them to him. And it was like
Speaker 1: being in a foreign film and with subtitles and watching
Speaker 1: it because it was so bizarre because we all spoke English.
Speaker 1: But I'd have to ask him, he would answer her,
Speaker 1: and she would answer me. So I just went on
Speaker 1: for like half an hour. It was so unnerving. But
Speaker 1: at some point I got this like a little like
Speaker 1: thought balloon, like, oh man, I can make this funny,
Speaker 1: you know, I can like do a thoughtful and thing
Speaker 1: like what's really going through my head? But it was
Speaker 1: so unnerving. I mean, I don't know how I pulled
Speaker 1: out of that one, but it was you know, once
Speaker 1: you get it field to get lemons, you make lemonade.
Speaker 1: I really make LeMond On that one. Okay, Uh, you're
Speaker 1: in this uptight situation. Do you whip out your curveball
Speaker 1: question or do you say I don't want to screw things.
Speaker 1: Oh you don't, I really, although I have to say
Speaker 1: that I did because it was during the tour where
Speaker 1: the tour doctor confronted Jimmy Page about someone stealing the
Speaker 1: quay lose that was the tour doctor carried, and I
Speaker 1: had the audacity asked him if he actually stole the
Speaker 1: quay loose so and he was this indignant and the
Speaker 1: crazy part is part two of the story. In two
Speaker 1: thousand six, Hugh Magazine hired me to do my recollections
Speaker 1: on on led c up one tours, So I wrote
Speaker 1: about that whole tour and a friend of mine, Brad Tolnsky,
Speaker 1: who was the editor of Guitar World, was friends during
Speaker 1: Page and one day he called me, so, there's somebody
Speaker 1: here who wants to talk to you, and he puts
Speaker 1: Stey Page on the phone. He goes, jan, I stole
Speaker 1: the kay lose. That's funny. That was great. I had
Speaker 1: no idea was going to do that. I was like
Speaker 1: one of those those yeah, sure, sure, it's Jimmy Page.
Speaker 1: But it was great. Okay. Now, I met a lot
Speaker 1: of these rock stars, and I've met them myself. They
Speaker 1: very rarely live up to the image in your head.
Speaker 1: So that begs the question who did and who didn't. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd say Ronnie van zandt did. He was he was
Speaker 1: like a prophet. He was like tapped into something that
Speaker 1: the rest of us just don't hear. You know, it
Speaker 1: was like he knew was going in. The sad part
Speaker 1: was he knew when he was leaving. And I think
Speaker 1: I talked about unnerving when I did a story on
Speaker 1: him and I was ill prepared. It was Lester Banning's
Speaker 1: birthday and he decided he didn't want the story because
Speaker 1: of birthday, said Jane, you go to the story, here's
Speaker 1: the questions, and just shoved me out of the nest. Really,
Speaker 1: I just did that. But during the course of the interview,
Speaker 1: and it was really long, I interviewed all of them,
Speaker 1: Ronnie Um and I just sat and talked to He said,
Speaker 1: you know, I had Janni's Choplin disease. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm to be here long. In fact, I doubt i'll
Speaker 1: see thirty. This was about a month before his twenty
Speaker 1: ninth birthday. And you know, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that I don't know why I might have left out
Speaker 1: Rick Waiteman's tall, but I put in that Ronnie van
Speaker 1: Zandt said he was never going to see thirty And
Speaker 1: then I remember being in Los Angeles reviewing some concert
Speaker 1: and hearing that they're playing had gone down and there
Speaker 1: were some survivors, and I immediately knew it wasn't him,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like there was a president of
Speaker 1: some press of something like surreal metaphysical, Like I think
Speaker 1: the best musicians get their information for someplace that world
Speaker 1: never know, and I think he was one of them.
Speaker 1: I think he was like the one who had the
Speaker 1: greatest impact on me. Um, just as soon al though
Speaker 1: we can't if he had not passed away, would he
Speaker 1: still have had the greatest impact? Um? I don't know that,
Speaker 1: because I think it was the fact that he shared
Speaker 1: that with me. That's a really great question, that he
Speaker 1: shared that moment with me, and I was somehow part
Speaker 1: of it. Um. I think that's what the impact was. UM.
Speaker 1: Other people, you know. I remember people who are nice
Speaker 1: to little people, you know. I love like Kirk Halmet
Speaker 1: from Metallica. It's always great and personalizes every interview and
Speaker 1: makes you feel like a human. I think when a
Speaker 1: rock star makes you feel like we're again back to
Speaker 1: that cream Ethos that were all the same and they
Speaker 1: remember you. Although your friend of my friend, Dicky straight
Speaker 1: told me a secret and I've got to stop now
Speaker 1: or show kill me. Never mind, never mind? You know
Speaker 1: Vicky through the Metallica club or do you know were
Speaker 1: previously at Columbia. I know, I know because she's from
Speaker 1: Royal at Michigan, the next town over from where I
Speaker 1: grew up and off Mike. But in uh, in any event,
Speaker 1: this brings us to Lester Banks. I mean, on my end,
Speaker 1: the most famous thing with Lester Banks, he wrote a
Speaker 1: review for Rolling Stone of Alice Cooper's Killer and it
Speaker 1: was boxed out and it was so over the top.
Speaker 1: This was in the days of the Great White Wonder
Speaker 1: and hoaxes that I bought the album just to see
Speaker 1: if it was a hoax or not. Of course you dropped,
Speaker 1: you dropped the needle. It was under my wheels and
Speaker 1: it was, of course incredible. So you follow the guy.
Speaker 1: Then he's playing on stage with the typewriter, etcetera. Then
Speaker 1: they have that he dies, they have the compilation book,
Speaker 1: so people like you and me know who these guys.
Speaker 1: These guys. Then Cameron makes the movie, turns him into
Speaker 1: a folk hero, who won't be forgotten. What was your
Speaker 1: experience of Lester Bags? You know, one of the greatest
Speaker 1: people ever met, too great impact on me, hev he
Speaker 1: even lived. In fact, I have a reoccurring dream about
Speaker 1: every two years where he says to me, jan I'm
Speaker 1: not dead of justin Florida. So I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how odd that is for me. But he was really
Speaker 1: He would call like subscribers up or people who would
Speaker 1: write him letters. We would because we work so late.
Speaker 1: We would just we would all like get the phone.
Speaker 1: He would call people who wrote him and give him encouragement.
Speaker 1: I mean he was every young writer's best friend. He
Speaker 1: was certainly mine. I mean he really helped me with
Speaker 1: a lot of things. He was driven in a way
Speaker 1: that you hardly ever see. When I say that people
Speaker 1: think that stories come out of your fingers, not your brain.
Speaker 1: They seemed to come out of his fingers. It was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to belabor this. This like people know
Speaker 1: where they're going to go. But it was like he
Speaker 1: was racing the devil. Like he almost felt like he
Speaker 1: didn't have all the time that he wanted because he
Speaker 1: he would sit down and just write the most beautifully constructed,
Speaker 1: well thought out pieces. It was a marvel and actually
Speaker 1: gave me a phobia for a long time because I
Speaker 1: wonder why I didn't write that fast. Now. He was
Speaker 1: a guy who would stare the ship. I mean, all
Speaker 1: you had to do is go to one of those
Speaker 1: lou Read contests. Every time he interviewed lou Read, he
Speaker 1: would always bring a posse and I was there a
Speaker 1: couple of times and he would just go writer's I
Speaker 1: mean box stars into like saying things that they might
Speaker 1: not like. He called it a little insect or asked
Speaker 1: him about his wife girlfriend Rachel, who was like omni sexual.
Speaker 1: I never figured that one out, but he would insult
Speaker 1: them to their face and it was like it was
Speaker 1: a site to be behold. It was also really embarrassing.
Speaker 1: But I can't say he did it in good fun.
Speaker 1: I think he just did because he wanted a reaction,
Speaker 1: because he knew it was a better story. He could
Speaker 1: be brutal and he could be the kindest man in
Speaker 1: the world. There was no middle speed with Lester. It
Speaker 1: was either fast or slow. And what do you think
Speaker 1: about his depiction and almost famous. Well, having had a
Speaker 1: little ado with that, Cameron hired me and Jim Durgat
Speaker 1: us to do little treatments, so it was so accurate.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that Cameron was such a genius in
Speaker 1: that character for two reasons. They would call me from
Speaker 1: the set all the time. But what kind of pieza
Speaker 1: did he really eat? Or whatever did they barbecue really
Speaker 1: come from there? So he was just slaved detail and
Speaker 1: that comes across. But the other thing which was so
Speaker 1: strange is casting phil Um Samoura Hoffmann because I interviewed
Speaker 1: him from OJO and I was sitting across from him,
Speaker 1: and I felt like there was less just ghost. He
Speaker 1: would even when he talked, he ate, and he would
Speaker 1: talk with his mouth full, something Lester always did. I
Speaker 1: felt that he was a mediumistic actor anyway, but I
Speaker 1: felt like I was. I was in the presence of Lester.
Speaker 1: I can't think that anyone was any better than that,
Speaker 1: like in that choice. Going back to almost famous, you
Speaker 1: know the scenes in the riot House, which is no
Speaker 1: longer called a hyatt uh. They changed the branding of
Speaker 1: those who thus who followed that from the late sixties on,
Speaker 1: especially a lot of the British musicians. These were dark
Speaker 1: characters doing dark things, dripping wax on people. Uh, what
Speaker 1: was your insight into the dark side of these musicians?
Speaker 1: You know, it was always fast it and how they
Speaker 1: got that way. I mean, the thing is that they
Speaker 1: would actually talk about if you had the guts to
Speaker 1: ask somebody about it. Maybe not Jimmy Page, who was
Speaker 1: the purveyor of most of that, you know, but um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean it was like, how did
Speaker 1: they get away with that? I honestly have to say
Speaker 1: I didn't ever get involved in anything that like the
Speaker 1: farious or witness to it, because I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is the part about not going for the sleeves
Speaker 1: part of it. I was always more ironic, psychological, like
Speaker 1: satiric writer, so I usually didn't see any of the
Speaker 1: horror mongy, you know. I do remember like when I
Speaker 1: was on tour with Fred Zeppelin, I mean, Jimmy Page
Speaker 1: dressing up just like this most beautiful boy there and
Speaker 1: having his arms slung around, you know, around his back,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, you know, I'm a little
Speaker 1: young and I'm Midwestern, and this is the first time
Speaker 1: I've seen that, so it kind of jolted me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't pretty to all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure who it was except for but
Speaker 1: who's Stanley Boost who wrote a really great book on
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones. I mean, not many people. You had
Speaker 1: to hang with them. You had to have the same
Speaker 1: kind of habits, had the same kind of cool, had
Speaker 1: the same kind of land Nick Nick can't he did
Speaker 1: with Iggy and was like like, I think probably stuff
Speaker 1: and it was Iggy definitely do you do you think
Speaker 1: you're cool? I do think I'm cool? Okay. Is it's
Speaker 1: something you always knew? Uh? It was something I always knew.
Speaker 1: I just I just but I cultivated. Yeah. Maybe I
Speaker 1: think it was just like I kind of grew up
Speaker 1: being fully formed, like I always knew what I wanted,
Speaker 1: and it's that never let them see you sweat kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Okay, continue, So others thy disagree. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't have my distractors, so okay. Uh So what
Speaker 1: are your parents to do for a living when you're
Speaker 1: growing up? Um, my dad was a was I worked
Speaker 1: at four. He was a design engineer and my mom
Speaker 1: was a dancer who hung up her shoes by the time,
Speaker 1: you know, my sister and I came along. And how
Speaker 1: many generations has your family been in America. My parents
Speaker 1: were both second generation. Their parents were born in the
Speaker 1: Old countries. They so quaintly said, how did your parents meet?
Speaker 1: They met in a bar um in Detroit, and they
Speaker 1: did they remain married during their lifetimes. And how many
Speaker 1: siblings do you have? I just have one sister who's
Speaker 1: a photographer, and she's older or younger. She's younger by
Speaker 1: how many years? By seven? That's a long time. What
Speaker 1: was going on? What was going on there? Well, at
Speaker 1: least something. Actually, my mom was afraid of the pain
Speaker 1: of childbirth, so she vowed never to have another child
Speaker 1: until they introduced togs into the birthing process. So my
Speaker 1: sister is like a drug baby. Okay, So you go
Speaker 1: to school, are you like popular, do you have friends?
Speaker 1: Or what kind of kid are you? I'm the second
Speaker 1: tallest kid in elementary school. So I either had a
Speaker 1: really good firs eide view or I was a really
Speaker 1: like um, I mean it was a little bit of
Speaker 1: an outcast, but not really like I had like my
Speaker 1: sub genre of people. So, um, you know, I was
Speaker 1: really like sporty spice I was. I was super athletic.
Speaker 1: I used to compete in track, so, um you know,
Speaker 1: I was I was pretty normal. But I think the
Speaker 1: hardest thing was is my name was so unpronounceable that
Speaker 1: I definitely had a complex. I remember a letter to
Speaker 1: Cream in later years and my favorite letter as someone said,
Speaker 1: tell you and your hellsky to get an American names.
Speaker 1: Love that that's gonna add a good sense of humors
Speaker 1: because the writers for Cream you did you have that
Speaker 1: sense of humor before you went to the magazine or that? Okay?
Speaker 1: And Dave Marsh, who has a reputation anybody's dealt with him,
Speaker 1: has an edge. What was your experience working with him?
Speaker 1: He was always like a for me, it was always
Speaker 1: like a kindly older brother and not that that much older,
Speaker 1: but you know, we've he was really impish with me,
Speaker 1: like we would go on like when the Detroit the
Speaker 1: Michigan State Fair would come, he would go on rise
Speaker 1: with me, like we can be kids together. I think
Speaker 1: we're We and Robbie Krueger were the youngest people on
Speaker 1: the staff, so we just brought out the kid in
Speaker 1: each other. He was still always amazing to me. Um
Speaker 1: for a long time, I felt like an apologist, and
Speaker 1: I've just thought why bother? You know, he can think
Speaker 1: and do it and so, but I've always seen a
Speaker 1: really good side of him. Okay, since we have this
Speaker 1: movie which goes back to them, where are all these
Speaker 1: people today? And you continue to have contact with them?
Speaker 1: I do. Everybody you see who's on the staff or
Speaker 1: who's still alive, absolutely in the dead ones. Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: they come in dreams, but yeah, I keep intentioned. It
Speaker 1: was something about the fraternity of being in in Cream
Speaker 1: in the beginning of the inception of something really amazing
Speaker 1: and going through it. It's like almost like going to
Speaker 1: high school with people together, or going through a war,
Speaker 1: like we experienced things together that you didn't experience a
Speaker 1: normal that it was really like heightened reality there. And
Speaker 1: what happened to them job was well, most people stayed
Speaker 1: either went into advertising, like Robert Duncan owned an ad agency,
Speaker 1: Eric Gnheimer. Everybody actually got really good jobs. It was
Speaker 1: a good step up. I mean, Susan Whitehall became the
Speaker 1: pop music critic at the Detroit News. Um, Lester, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Lester, he had to do that vagabond go
Speaker 1: to New York and be a New York writer thing,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, you know, I'm not really sure what
Speaker 1: what went wrong. I'm not sure what twist he took.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was always a heavy drinker, and we
Speaker 1: definitely consumed codings because we thought it would be a
Speaker 1: performance enhancer in terms of our writing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I never thought of him as that excessive. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm naive about that, but I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: I think everybody really got got good jobs afterwards. Okay,
Speaker 1: just staying with Lester as an outsider, uh and reading
Speaker 1: the publicity. It was the punk era where theoretically anybody
Speaker 1: could get on stage. It seemed from a distance that
Speaker 1: he wanted to be on stage a star, not only
Speaker 1: a writer. Was that your experience? Would you say that's undrew?
Speaker 1: You know, I think that happened after I left, Like
Speaker 1: I left in nineteen seventy six in March, and he
Speaker 1: left in December of seventy six, and then he started,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the Radio Birdman happened maybe the
Speaker 1: next couple of years. I honestly thought when he got
Speaker 1: on stage with with Peter Wolf and Jay Giles that
Speaker 1: that was a flute. That was just another story, one
Speaker 1: of our high concept stories. So I was actually surprised
Speaker 1: because he didn't have a tremendous voice. You know, but
Speaker 1: he had he had that hutzpah. I remember the whole
Speaker 1: thing pleased in the band with Nicky Um. Mickey Joy,
Speaker 1: Roon's brother also and they described it both the Mickey
Speaker 1: and Enjoys described it as kind of like Lester was
Speaker 1: like that movie Will Build. It's not feeling worried that
Speaker 1: what about Bob where the guy comes up and shows
Speaker 1: up the shrinks. That's how how Lester was because their
Speaker 1: stepfather was his shrink. So, um, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: honestly was surprised when he did it. Okay, so how
Speaker 1: did you decide to leave cream? Um? This is really personal,
Speaker 1: but Charlie Oranger slept with my best friend Peggy, Peggy Carlson,
Speaker 1: one of the T shirt girls, and I thought I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. It was it's really it was like
Speaker 1: one of those things that was a watershed moment and
Speaker 1: my whole life spun on that moment. Okay, how did
Speaker 1: you find out? He told me? Why? Because I told
Speaker 1: told them that, um, she wanted him to fix her
Speaker 1: up with his assistant, and he told me know, she's
Speaker 1: more interested in me, and I go, oh no, she's
Speaker 1: my best friend. Honestly, my whole life collapsed on that
Speaker 1: moment and I started making other plans. Just what what
Speaker 1: went through your head when he told you that? It
Speaker 1: was like it was like a hot knife, you know,
Speaker 1: to go a little bit deeper. Was this a one
Speaker 1: time event or was he having a full blown affair? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think it was a one time event. But I
Speaker 1: it just it just really cut me, you know. I
Speaker 1: think I was so unaware of it or that actually
Speaker 1: even to the day, I don't know. I think it
Speaker 1: was just a one time event. And and of course
Speaker 1: I've forgiven them all and we're all like not close,
Speaker 1: but you know, amends have been made. But honestly, I
Speaker 1: have to say that it was the small moment that
Speaker 1: that actually informed the whole rest of my life. Okay,
Speaker 1: walk us through that quickly. Oh. Then I decided I
Speaker 1: was going to probably go get another job. I remember
Speaker 1: Barry Kramer saying to me, well, you better make this work,
Speaker 1: because if I have to fire somebody, I'm going to
Speaker 1: fire you because Charlie has been with me since day
Speaker 1: when he is the art director, and you're one of
Speaker 1: many editors. So I so I pretty much went through
Speaker 1: the motions for the next couple of years, until I
Speaker 1: finally left. And also it took a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I just started planning. I'm a planner.
Speaker 1: Can't you see that? The true line? Okay, so everybody knew,
Speaker 1: I Verry knew. I didn't tell anybody else. Okay, So
Speaker 1: for these couple of years, needles to say, you're not
Speaker 1: his girlfriend anymore? Right, I'm just taking it. I'm like
Speaker 1: phoning it in. Okay. So then how do you ultimately
Speaker 1: decide to make the break and how does that happen?
Speaker 1: I actually met somebody else, you know, because I didn't
Speaker 1: feel all that monogamous anymore. So I met um, I
Speaker 1: met a photographer at barbecue at the oh my god,
Speaker 1: the Capricorn Barbecue and wow, yeah, so wait, just let's
Speaker 1: go back all these events. They would say, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to come? We're gonna pay. Often how often
Speaker 1: did you go? Well, I'd say I went on the
Speaker 1: road one week a year, one week, one week a month,
Speaker 1: like every time you did a story, you went on
Speaker 1: the road. And they would like thing, whip you, you know,
Speaker 1: like they would like say, I remember that's the London trip.
Speaker 1: I remember them saying the record Covery would say, well,
Speaker 1: if you need anything. It's working for Christmas, I doing anything,
Speaker 1: Just go get a few things from the gift shop.
Speaker 1: So it was like Pola yet insidious, subtle Paola okay,
Speaker 1: but being on the road forgetting in one town, but
Speaker 1: being on the road on a bus, even in a plane,
Speaker 1: it takes a strong constitution to be on the road
Speaker 1: for a week. You don't get much sleep, etcetera. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's your viewpoint about going on the road? Been there,
Speaker 1: done that, don't want to do it again. I think
Speaker 1: that you get the best stories because you get people
Speaker 1: an act of being themselves, so you see so much more,
Speaker 1: just like the Steve Miller thing. You see the small motions,
Speaker 1: the how someone interacts with somebody else, how they act
Speaker 1: in any situations. But you don't see that when you're
Speaker 1: sitting across from somebody in a record company office. Like,
Speaker 1: given given the choice, I will always go Now. You
Speaker 1: don't go on the road. You go to somebody's house,
Speaker 1: like now I'll go to like because most of the
Speaker 1: stories I do for Uncut magazine, they're in home visits,
Speaker 1: Like I show up at somebody's house with you know,
Speaker 1: my my digital recorder and my camera, and I do
Speaker 1: the story, So I pick up the clues of a person.
Speaker 1: Well on the road, it's like it's stretched out. You're
Speaker 1: picking up clues with somebody for like a week or
Speaker 1: three days or four days or however long it was,
Speaker 1: but it was some time, and you get these sit
Speaker 1: down sessions with them, or you go do things with them,
Speaker 1: like go see a jazz ban or do this or that,
Speaker 1: like Allin Brothers was like that. So you go to
Speaker 1: the Capricorn picnic, you meet this other guy. How do
Speaker 1: you finally quit um? He asked me to marry him,
Speaker 1: and I moved to l A and where he was,
Speaker 1: where he was and it didn't work out? How long?
Speaker 1: How long did it taken out to work out? Five days?
Speaker 1: Five days? How much contact that you had it before
Speaker 1: you moved up, had with him before you moved out?
Speaker 1: A lot more than you would think that I would
Speaker 1: come to that conclusion after five days? What was what
Speaker 1: was the deal breaker? He had done? S to remember
Speaker 1: sked that self realization kind of program that people did
Speaker 1: sevent days more in air Heart and he was going
Speaker 1: to go back for a seminar while I was there
Speaker 1: my first a few days when I was there and
Speaker 1: we came back from the seminar, he said he didn't
Speaker 1: feel like he had thoroughly ended it with his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend and maybe I should move out. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of not my decision, but I refused to tell
Speaker 1: anybody because I had quit the best job in the
Speaker 1: world to move to l A. And did you have
Speaker 1: a job in l A. No. I started freelancing for
Speaker 1: Playgirl magazine. I don't know if you remember that magazine Centerfold,
Speaker 1: that's the one. So I worked for them a little
Speaker 1: bit and then I got outimately got hired at Record World,
Speaker 1: and that was which led to the next chapters of
Speaker 1: my life. So I became the columnists at home at
Speaker 1: Record World. Like shortly after that, I just said I
Speaker 1: wasn't going home. I spent all my furniture with me,
Speaker 1: Like everything I owned was with me in l A.
Speaker 1: And did you have enough money to exist? Well, when
Speaker 1: my grandmother died, she gave me a dream book. She said,
Speaker 1: go to the track with the dream book because the
Speaker 1: numbers you everything you dream has a number in bet
Speaker 1: those and five. So um, yeah, I actually, um, I
Speaker 1: actually made money, you know, and I supported myself and
Speaker 1: then um, I got the job at Record World. And
Speaker 1: then you know, things just picked up. Okay, So then
Speaker 1: you get married, you have your daughter. What's your daughter
Speaker 1: up to today? She is an ad copywriter and she
Speaker 1: owns candle company where she she makes candles like metaphysical
Speaker 1: candles based on the throw. And where does she live?
Speaker 1: She lives in New York Okay, and you have her,
Speaker 1: she grows up. How do you go back to college?
Speaker 1: How do you decide to get back into the writing game. Um.
Speaker 1: When I graduated from college, I went to work for
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and I worked for a national women's
Speaker 1: political caucus and it's women trying to get other women elected.
Speaker 1: But the crazy part about it was it was a
Speaker 1: little mean spirit. It was women on women crime and
Speaker 1: it was so like I was so shocked that it did.
Speaker 1: There was not that camaraderie like we're in this together,
Speaker 1: which I like, I love. That's my favorite thing work
Speaker 1: collaborative with a lot of people towards one goal. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't that. So I thought, well what am I
Speaker 1: gonna do? So I started I started freelancing. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be I was gonna get a
Speaker 1: graduate school to go get a teaching degree to teach history,
Speaker 1: and but no, that doesn't really appeal to me. So
Speaker 1: I started freelancing, and I started getting hired a lot
Speaker 1: for writing about music. So I just went down that path.
Speaker 1: It just opened up again. I mean, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much I just re entered my life where I left it. Okay,
Speaker 1: need let's just say we grew up in Eric, where
Speaker 1: music drove the culture. What do you think about today's
Speaker 1: seeing in today's music visa VI what it was? Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like they don't seek there. I don't. I
Speaker 1: got my identity from music, I mean somehow, and the
Speaker 1: lyrics there was prophecy, it was encoded, was a message
Speaker 1: that we all got, you know. And if you like
Speaker 1: the Stone to a certain kind of person, if you
Speaker 1: like the Beatles, you are another kind Like it defined
Speaker 1: who we were everything. Now people don't need that sense
Speaker 1: of identification. It's not so cut and dry. It's not
Speaker 1: a world of strays and heads is that you know?
Speaker 1: That term used to be too. So I think that
Speaker 1: there's other ways that people pick up who they are
Speaker 1: the persona and if there's anything and people are more gamers,
Speaker 1: you know, and music has just fallen out. It's kind
Speaker 1: of background music. And I think it's really a disservice
Speaker 1: because I still think that somehow musicians are tapped in
Speaker 1: and they hear things that the rest of us don't.
Speaker 1: They just get some kind of message, some kind of
Speaker 1: enlighten it, some kind of way to live. And maybe
Speaker 1: I'm putting too much on a musician, but I've I've
Speaker 1: found out a lot of things that I know, I
Speaker 1: find just by probing a musicians brain. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know you interview musicians, I mean, do you know?
Speaker 1: I mean I find that you know, you talk about
Speaker 1: being in a club and being different. The only people
Speaker 1: I tend to be able to relate to our musicians.
Speaker 1: They have the same attitude. They're outsiders. They can laugh
Speaker 1: at life, They're gonna go whereas everybody else you know,
Speaker 1: is following the buck and checking off the boxes whatever,
Speaker 1: which is just not who I am. And uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask you a very standard question. But you have
Speaker 1: so much experience, I think people want to know, Oh,
Speaker 1: you've been to so many concerts. What are the handful
Speaker 1: of best concerts you ever saw? Prince at Radio City
Speaker 1: back in the eighties, maybe eighty one, that was probably
Speaker 1: number one. The Stone Roses actually at the fillmore Um
Speaker 1: when they came back for their second coming album. That
Speaker 1: was transformative led Zeppelin the second time I saw them
Speaker 1: in nineteen um the Beatles in sixty six, even though
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear them, It's it was like one of
Speaker 1: those life changing and um Connor Oberst when he was
Speaker 1: just when he was Bright Eyes around two thousand four,
Speaker 1: that one just really spoke to my core. There's something
Speaker 1: again he something in his voice, something in his expression,
Speaker 1: something in that that stream of consciousness words. It's almost
Speaker 1: like like deciphering cave dwelling. Like I feel like again
Speaker 1: he's tapped into something and I relate to that. And
Speaker 1: I always think that arts, amir like the bands, you
Speaker 1: like the artists, you like they reflect something of yourself
Speaker 1: and you see that in them. And obviously something I
Speaker 1: see in myself I see in him. Maybe not Liz
Speaker 1: Up when that's just pure like m Bass. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I think I have like an incomplete theory
Speaker 1: about that. But those are my five. Okay. At the time,
Speaker 1: you know, the Stone Roses only had one album. They
Speaker 1: were legends in the UK, really didn't have impact in
Speaker 1: the US. Why was the show so great? You know,
Speaker 1: I came to light I missed in the first time around,
Speaker 1: and it was really an assignment, like I had to
Speaker 1: cover it for I was working for a news magazine
Speaker 1: Addicted to Noise that um I did back in the
Speaker 1: early nineties with Michael Roberg, one of the first online
Speaker 1: music magazines, and it was one of those things which
Speaker 1: always works for me, Like you said, just go cover
Speaker 1: these guys, so I um I started writing news about
Speaker 1: them and I did an interview with them, and when
Speaker 1: they came out for that second tour after that second
Speaker 1: album Electra, I don't know, there was just magic. It's
Speaker 1: just something in that kind of like Shoegazer tonality. It's
Speaker 1: just really like sound. Like Braceleck said that God is
Speaker 1: energy and and you know, music is vibration and that's
Speaker 1: where the Holy list. And there was something about that
Speaker 1: Stone Roses concert that I saw the film were not
Speaker 1: technically wonderful. Ian Brown's voice was flat, but there's just
Speaker 1: something in that whole experience of that that blast of sound,
Speaker 1: that way it goes into your body and the viscual
Speaker 1: reaction to it. They just strike a chord with me,
Speaker 1: and that's really what it is. Did you keep the
Speaker 1: records in the ephemeral Yes, no, not not, not any
Speaker 1: of it. I had the Stone Roads and stuff. I
Speaker 1: have a Gold Fool's Gold album. But no, I gave everything. Wait,
Speaker 1: I even gave my last cream T shirt to Joey
Speaker 1: Ramone like no, nothing, Well that makes a story that's
Speaker 1: worth So why did you mean to get the records
Speaker 1: for free? That was one reason you became a rock critic. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you gave them away later in life or during
Speaker 1: the era? No, you know, I have so I could
Speaker 1: get everything back, Like I als was traveling light, like
Speaker 1: when I moved to California. I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: because my daughter was moving to l A. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how much stuff I put on that
Speaker 1: Mayflower truck. And did I take my records? Yeah, just
Speaker 1: to select few. I found them when my father died.
Speaker 1: I found the rest of them and I just sold
Speaker 1: them and um and like in a state sale. But
Speaker 1: you know, the other fact was they weren't in good shape.
Speaker 1: My parents living in Michigan, they would have annual floods,
Speaker 1: so they weren't in great shape. But I just think
Speaker 1: I was always going to be able and pick up
Speaker 1: that stuff. Again, I think it was always going to
Speaker 1: go on forever. I said that in the Cream documentary.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it made it into the film, but
Speaker 1: they asked me if I kept anything. I said no,
Speaker 1: I didn't keep anything. I really thought it would go
Speaker 1: on forever and I can go and get my Cream
Speaker 1: T shirts later. I know. Okay, if you have to
Speaker 1: do it all over again, the same path, same path,
Speaker 1: you well that you know this is about you. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: I would say I don't have any regrets, but there
Speaker 1: are choices I made that I question, okay, in terms
Speaker 1: of dedicating myself to rock and roll, not that it
Speaker 1: was consciously that. You know, it's kind of like Godfather
Speaker 1: three and he tried to leave. It just pulls you
Speaker 1: back in. And uh so what did we learn? You
Speaker 1: know all this? You know, this journey of decades. I
Speaker 1: think that, um, I mean, it's a thing that keeps
Speaker 1: going back to that there's something holy in the sound.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like the tribe speaks to each other
Speaker 1: through music, and I like to be part of the tribe.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really did grow up in that Hipper
Speaker 1: era and I feel completely dedicated to preserving that group.
Speaker 1: Think that that we're in it together and we can
Speaker 1: make this a better way. And I got those messages
Speaker 1: in the music. Like I remember this Lester quote. It's
Speaker 1: something like like he he listened to black bands obsessively
Speaker 1: because in some flash flight moment he saw he saw
Speaker 1: hope of a better world, a better society, saw prophecy
Speaker 1: in that. And that quote always got me because that
Speaker 1: was it. It's like I saw some vision that I
Speaker 1: wanted to be. Do I want to date rock Star's
Speaker 1: note I want to be them? No, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to explain them to myself and then exclaim to other people.
Speaker 1: It was just fascinating to me. Well, Needles say, the
Speaker 1: ethos has changed. When we were growing up, if there
Speaker 1: were any Republicans, you literally knew who they were and
Speaker 1: you hunt them out. Okay, and certainly remember after Ken
Speaker 1: State we had Ohio. We also remember listening to the radio.
Speaker 1: The radio gave you everything, gave you the music, gave
Speaker 1: you the news, whatever. But it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: that way. This just going to the ultimate question. Is
Speaker 1: there hope? You seem to be an optimistic person in
Speaker 1: a nation full of turmoil? Is their hope? And what
Speaker 1: role does music I have to play in that, you know.
Speaker 1: I think it's more like artists or maybe actors. There
Speaker 1: any kind of artists. You know, it's like if you
Speaker 1: can make enough of a statement in people who follow you,
Speaker 1: which that's what it is, you know that they will
Speaker 1: follow you anywhere kind of thing. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that there's always room for the truth,
Speaker 1: and you know, sometimes it's listened to and sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1: Do I feel pessimistic about the future. I still feel
Speaker 1: like it's going to readjust things get so bad that
Speaker 1: the pendulum has to swing swing the other way. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. Is there hope for music. I want
Speaker 1: to say yes, but not in the part it doesn't
Speaker 1: occupy the same place in the culture and it may
Speaker 1: never again. Well, you've certainly laid down some truth and
Speaker 1: inside here, Jan this has been wonderful. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for fearing the time. Oh thank you for maowing me
Speaker 1: until next time. This is Bob left us