Speaker 1: Qost Loft Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen. Right now, Lisa Robinson is showing us.
Speaker 2: We're on zoom right now.
Speaker 3: She showed me her illustrious record collection, and I'm celebating
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 4: Okay, what's behind me is a portion, not all of them,
Speaker 4: of my five thousand hours of interviews, all the original cassettes,
Speaker 4: plus manic backups. Richard did my husband before he died,
Speaker 4: on CD because he didn't believe in the cloud, the
Speaker 4: internet or the computers, so he made backups on two
Speaker 4: or three CDs of every single cassette. Then I had
Speaker 4: to hire an IT guy after Richard died, and he
Speaker 4: copied it onto two different computers, three external hard drives,
Speaker 4: and three backups of the external hard drugs and secure
Speaker 4: undisclosed locations. So what's behind me? All the original interviews
Speaker 4: were some of them.
Speaker 3: I have to say that I've known you about twenty years,
Speaker 3: and often I have I haven't stayed up at night,
Speaker 3: but I've definitely wondered, are you properly going to archive
Speaker 3: your your collection, your collection of notes in He told
Speaker 3: me that you have like original hotel notes in stationary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have an original questionnaire Michael Jackson toil that
Speaker 4: when he was eleven that I kept in a safety
Speaker 4: deposit box for years where.
Speaker 2: He was Is this the infamous one where he called
Speaker 2: himself a nigger?
Speaker 4: He wrote? The question was what's your nickname? And he
Speaker 4: said the nose and then he wrote ni g one word,
Speaker 4: one g er but he crossed that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not I've heard about this or I have
Speaker 2: Where did you hear about it?
Speaker 4: Other than me? Because I have nobody else.
Speaker 2: I know you, so uh okay.
Speaker 4: Letters, yeah, letters from Bowie and John Lennon and everybody
Speaker 4: on the planet. And four storage spaces that I spend
Speaker 4: fifty thousand dollars a year in addition to this museum
Speaker 4: I'm living in, and an office across the street that
Speaker 4: also houses a lot of shit. And in terms of
Speaker 4: really properly appraising or archiving it, I've been too busy
Speaker 4: trying to earn a living for all these years. I
Speaker 4: just haven't had the time. So the audio archives are
Speaker 4: pretty well documented now, they're on a bunch of databases.
Speaker 4: The photos I have trunks and trunks and trunks of
Speaker 4: original photos from Bob Grew and Lee Childers, Annie Liebovitz,
Speaker 4: Peter Hughes or Maplethorpe. I mean so much stuff that
Speaker 4: I never hung any of it up. It's in storage,
Speaker 4: It's in my house and boxes and closets. I actually
Speaker 4: have something, maybe you would want it. I was in
Speaker 4: Nashville and I was in a thrift store and there
Speaker 4: was one of those huge posters of a black barbershop,
Speaker 4: you know, the drawings with the fabulous kind of old
Speaker 4: like some girls kind.
Speaker 2: Of wigs it.
Speaker 4: I bought it and I shipped it back to New York.
Speaker 4: And this was in two thousand and.
Speaker 2: Four, maybe okay, And.
Speaker 4: I said to friend, what should I do with this?
Speaker 4: I was going to either give it to Tony Morrison
Speaker 4: or that an artisan, because they collect that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: And she said, well, I wouldn't display it. It's really
Speaker 4: not correct for you to display it. So it's hiding
Speaker 4: somewhere in a closet. It's awesome, though, it is so
Speaker 4: great anyway.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have to properly introduce you, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: This is quest lof Supreme. I knew the second that
Speaker 3: her mic was on the stories would come. And of
Speaker 3: course the stories came even before I did the proper introduction,
Speaker 3: I will say that our guest, Damn Near is a
Speaker 3: pioneer or invented rock and roll journalism.
Speaker 2: There was a time in your life where.
Speaker 3: Making a living writing about the lives of rock stars.
Speaker 2: Was a questionable thing. One couldn't make a living off
Speaker 2: of it. So I will say that our.
Speaker 3: Guest today is a pioneer in terms of one that
Speaker 3: actually made their full time career kind of journaling.
Speaker 2: The lives of others.
Speaker 3: Name them New Music, Express, Cream Magazine, the New York Post,
Speaker 3: even all the way down to Vanity Fair, if you will.
Speaker 3: She's probably the trusted pla one in the rooms. He's
Speaker 3: literally seen everyone and everything. And these types of venterviews
Speaker 3: are my favorite because oftentimes I say that you'll learn more.
Speaker 2: About a subject based on the extra eyes.
Speaker 3: In the room, not necessarily the subject themselves.
Speaker 2: So name them from Jagger to Richards to Paige and
Speaker 2: Plant to Bowie, Read Lennon, Ono, Jackson, Bono. I forgot
Speaker 2: what Bono's I forgot what Bono's last name is.
Speaker 3: It's a that's right, Houston.
Speaker 2: Paul Houston. That's right. It's like an uncle of my
Speaker 2: I don't recognize any of those names. Did you ever
Speaker 2: meet anybody famous?
Speaker 3: I will say that I highly recommend as far as
Speaker 3: memoirs are concerned, both both of her books, uh No.
Speaker 3: One never asked me about the girls and There Goes Gravity.
Speaker 3: Those are probably two my favorite memoirs.
Speaker 2: I don't know like I. Journalists to me are like
Speaker 2: just as equal rock stars as the actual rock stars himself.
Speaker 2: So please welcome two quest left Supreme Lisa Robinson. Okay,
Speaker 2: what were you saying, Steve? No no, I made my joke.
Speaker 2: Now you made.
Speaker 4: Anyone famous?
Speaker 2: Just for me? All out out out the gate, Lisa.
Speaker 2: For our guests that might not be familiar with your
Speaker 2: your pedigree and your history, could you please give me
Speaker 2: three random historical I was there moments that that come
Speaker 2: come to mind? You know this gives you a.
Speaker 4: Chance Led Zeppelin when it to a manager pulled out
Speaker 4: a gun.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was on the other end of the Peter
Speaker 2: Grant he pulled out a gun.
Speaker 4: It was Richard Cole. Anyway, I was.
Speaker 2: Well, wait, wait, you can't just glide by that.
Speaker 4: You just asked the three random You want me to
Speaker 4: tell you the whole story?
Speaker 2: We'd be on for that's what we know.
Speaker 4: No hold on a second. Let me just say something. Yes,
Speaker 4: I'm doing a serious radio show by the way, Serious
Speaker 4: XM starting tomorrow night from seven to eight pm. And
Speaker 4: it's called Call Me with Lisa Robinson. Because, as you know,
Speaker 4: I'm still in an old BlackBerry. I only know how
Speaker 4: to text on it.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I.
Speaker 4: Like people to actually call me at any rate. Okay,
Speaker 4: so that's one.
Speaker 2: The Texas instruments in business. That's that much, I'll.
Speaker 4: Say the second, I am worldwide West. Who's with the
Speaker 4: Knicks now? My favorite team? Are the only people I
Speaker 4: know who still use a BlackBerry? Anyway, back to the
Speaker 4: three random incidents, let me think I can't think of
Speaker 4: just three out of thousands. But okay, the LED's up
Speaker 4: room of the gun, Michael Jackson calling me on the
Speaker 4: phone crying that he did not want to tour with
Speaker 4: his brothers in nineteen eighty on that victory tour, I
Speaker 4: eighty four CE. You're the scholar. I don't remember all
Speaker 4: the dates, okay, So oh man, I don't want to
Speaker 4: talk about the time Mick Jagger had to borrow my
Speaker 4: underpants because he lost his jockstrap. But I guess backwards, right,
Speaker 4: that's been well documented. Here's the point, I just want
Speaker 4: to say two things. You said all the people that
Speaker 4: I had interviewed, and or you started to talk about Bowie,
Speaker 4: Lou Reed, the stone Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, et cetera. You
Speaker 4: mentioned one woman, Yoko Ono. The reason I wrote nobody
Speaker 4: ever asked me about the girls is because I had
Speaker 4: interviewed Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, Mary j Blige, Linda Ronstadt,
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody after Jennie Stoplin. Thank god it was
Speaker 4: someone before my time. And the point is I always
Speaker 4: had to answer questions like what's Eminem really like? What's
Speaker 4: cunning like? I mean, you know you probably get the
Speaker 4: same thing, or what was John Lennon really like? Or
Speaker 4: what was David Bowie really like? And I finally got
Speaker 4: to the point after having written There Goes Gravity, which
Speaker 4: was mostly all about guys except for one chapter on
Speaker 4: Lady Garda, I thought it's about time I started dealing
Speaker 4: with the women. So that was one thing I just
Speaker 4: wanted to clarify. And the other thing is when you
Speaker 4: said that I was a pioneer at a time when
Speaker 4: no one was making a living writing about rock and
Speaker 4: roll musicians or a popular culture. We still don't make
Speaker 4: a living and do it matter? So I just like
Speaker 4: to clarify that, for the record, we were having too
Speaker 4: much fun. Nobody was talking about money. Nobody was thinking
Speaker 4: about that. In the seventies, I would make like forty
Speaker 4: dollars a week from a syndicated column or editing Hip
Speaker 4: Parado with my husband, or going on tour with Zeppelin,
Speaker 4: and the Stones are hanging out and CBGB's every night,
Speaker 4: and I thought this was great. I mean, we were
Speaker 4: in a rent control department. I'm still in a rent
Speaker 4: stabilized apartment, same one. We moved into a nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: six and it's like a museum. I never decorated it.
Speaker 4: It's just full of books and records and interviews and
Speaker 4: some memorabilia that I don't trust to leave in Manhattan
Speaker 4: mini storage. But it just was different time. It was like, also, Amir,
Speaker 4: you know you grew up in this business. I mean,
Speaker 4: I even think I saw as a kid Lee Andrews
Speaker 4: and the Hearts. I don't know, maybe at the Brooklyn
Speaker 4: Fox or one of those places I snuck out of
Speaker 4: my house as a teenager to go see Thelonious Monk
Speaker 4: of the five Spot or on Coltrane or Anito O'Day
Speaker 4: and Stan Getz at the Village Vanguard, but also to
Speaker 4: go to those early rock and roll shows at the
Speaker 4: Brooklyn Fox Theater. I don't remember going to the Apollo,
Speaker 4: but I do remember going to the Apollo much later
Speaker 4: when I was teaching school in Harlem in the sixties.
Speaker 4: But I grew up with all this music. I used
Speaker 4: to listen to it under the covers with the transistor radio,
Speaker 4: you know that old cliche, And it just made me
Speaker 4: feel like there was a great, sexy, interesting world out there,
Speaker 4: and I was a fan. And I grew up in
Speaker 4: a left wing household that played Led Belly and Woody Gothrie.
Speaker 4: And I knew about Mama Mae Thornton and sister I
Speaker 4: was Ota Thorpe, and you know a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: that no other journalists. When I was starting out, knew
Speaker 4: about extept From my husband, who was on WAWFM when
Speaker 4: it was nineteen sixty nine free form music. And I
Speaker 4: heard his voice in the middle of the night. He
Speaker 4: was on the graveyard shift, and I thought, A he
Speaker 4: had a very sexy voice, and B he played unbelievable music.
Speaker 4: And he got fired five times. The first time was
Speaker 4: they're playing music what they called unfamiliar music, which was
Speaker 4: can Tina Turner, Tina Turner and Vanetta Field's doing a
Speaker 4: battle on something got a hold on me. I'll never
Speaker 4: forget it. Pp Arnold doing first cut is the deepest
Speaker 4: Curtis Mayfield and the impressions because he also worked at Buddha.
Speaker 4: So so yeah. So Richard got fired for playing unfamiliar music,
Speaker 4: which was black music. Then they hired him back again
Speaker 4: because he was like the house tippy, and he got
Speaker 4: fired for playing Jimmy Hendrickson's star spangled banner because they
Speaker 4: told him it was unpatriotic. Then they hired him again,
Speaker 4: and I think he played the stooges and the velvets,
Speaker 4: but like really, you know, some of the sicker stuff
Speaker 4: like I want to be your dog, or Heroin or
Speaker 4: white light, white heat, or just kind of noise stuff.
Speaker 4: They fired him again, and I think the last time
Speaker 4: they hired him he just went on the air, flush
Speaker 4: the toilet and walked off. And so this was my
Speaker 4: introduction to the music business. I went to work for
Speaker 4: him doing his smiling. Five months later we got married.
Speaker 4: He turned one of his columns over to me in England.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of how it started. He opened a
Speaker 4: door and I barged through.
Speaker 2: What I'll say is based on.
Speaker 3: You know, I've collected a lot of old periodicals and
Speaker 3: all those things, so I've seen your work, you know.
Speaker 3: I'll say that the difference between your brand of documenting
Speaker 3: a moment was way different than say, you know, the
Speaker 3: Beatles with land in America in the sixties and have
Speaker 3: a press conference like at the airport or at the hotel,
Speaker 3: people have random questions. It's like audio CrowdWork whatever. But
Speaker 3: your brand work, how did you know that? I mean,
Speaker 3: it's somewhere between like page you know, I know that
Speaker 3: you've done in depth Q and A interviews as well,
Speaker 3: but you know, you doing quick takes like you know,
Speaker 3: Bowie hung out at Maxis Kansas City and he wore
Speaker 3: a leopard T shirt. Like people weren't describing like what
Speaker 3: people were wearing or any of those things.
Speaker 2: Like you you were like the precursor at like page six.
Speaker 2: So how did you even know?
Speaker 4: I don't know about page six, but maybe MTV and
Speaker 4: fashion and style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the idea of it right, Well.
Speaker 4: First of all, thank god, the Beatles were before my time.
Speaker 4: Something else before my time, but I never asked a
Speaker 4: question at a press conference because I always ask more
Speaker 4: interesting questions and I didn't want anybody else getting the
Speaker 4: answers all the quo Kanye. Kanye had a listening party
Speaker 4: once for which is the album is a late Graduation
Speaker 4: that John Bryan produced with WE Major and gold Digger
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 2: The second one.
Speaker 4: Anyway, you had a listening party for that with a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of press in the room, and Jay was there,
Speaker 4: and I'm friendly with John Brian and I knew he
Speaker 4: produced the record, and I had met Conye several times
Speaker 4: through John, and when they played WE Major, I went
Speaker 4: ballistic because to his day, I still think it's the
Speaker 4: best thing he's ever done. But it was like a
Speaker 4: Phil Specter symphony, and I just went crazy. So I
Speaker 4: had to ask a question, and I raised my hand
Speaker 4: and Jay went on, he has a question. He says
Speaker 4: a question, and I said, how many tracks are on
Speaker 4: WE Major? And they had no idea, They didn't know,
Speaker 4: they didn't know the answer, and so they started calling
Speaker 4: me the stumper. For a long time. Actually, Jay started
Speaker 4: calling me. He kept calling me Stumper, and I went
Speaker 4: home and called John Brian, who told me that he
Speaker 4: got it from some kidne Agar Archer made a loop
Speaker 4: of it. At any rate, what I did as a
Speaker 4: journalist from the jump was I was interested in their lives,
Speaker 4: their music. I mean, when I met Jimmy Page, I
Speaker 4: would talk to him about Muddy Waters and Holm Wolf
Speaker 4: and Elmore James and Willie Dixon, who they ripped off allegedly,
Speaker 4: although I think they had to pay. Well. I get
Speaker 4: very nervous about that. So you know, it's like a
Speaker 4: deesu is a maryle thing allegedly allegedly allegedly anyway, So
Speaker 4: so and I. But I'd also talked to Robert Plant
Speaker 4: about Fairport Convention and Kaleidoscope and Incredible String Band and
Speaker 4: Jenny Mitchell because I grew up the same loving the
Speaker 4: same music they did, and I I didn't love a
Speaker 4: lot of the folks stuff so much then I grew
Speaker 4: to I did like the Incredible String Band, but on Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 4: But I would talk to them about their musical taste.
Speaker 4: I would write about their clothes. I mean, I'll never
Speaker 4: forget when I was in New Orleans with those guys
Speaker 4: the first time I ever interviewed them lengthily. Robert was
Speaker 4: wearing a red Nilon speedo bikini parading around the pool.
Speaker 4: Parading is the only word I could use for it.
Speaker 4: And Jimmy Page was wearing a maroon velvet jacket in
Speaker 4: eighty three degree weather, and I remember writing that it
Speaker 4: was sweltering at eighty three degree weather, so some of
Speaker 4: the climate change that was nineteen seventy three. Anyway, I
Speaker 4: just started talking to them about music. I started talking
Speaker 4: about their clothes. And this was a time that people
Speaker 4: don't know they were written about as a heavy, cheesy,
Speaker 4: heavy metal band. Every male journalist, every one of my
Speaker 4: so called colleagues who threatened to quit Cream magazine when
Speaker 4: I started to do a column called Elaganza, which was
Speaker 4: named after a black pimp catalog, and it was all
Speaker 4: about clothes, and all these guys threatened to leave the
Speaker 4: magazine because they said it was decadent. I shouldn't be
Speaker 4: writing about clothes. This was the alternative culture. This was
Speaker 4: the revolution. I mean, this is in Detroit, by the way,
Speaker 4: where the White Panthers and John Sinclair were sitting around
Speaker 4: a table plotting revolution while the women were in the
Speaker 4: kitchen cooking. So I would just love to make that
Speaker 4: point about the MC five even though they were a
Speaker 4: great band. However, I would always talk to these guys
Speaker 4: just on a level of mutual musician fandom and asked
Speaker 4: them about their lives. I didn't review their records, I
Speaker 4: didn't review their concerts. I didn't do any boring analysis
Speaker 4: shit about their lyrics. And I just think they were relieved.
Speaker 4: I mean again, this was at a time when John
Speaker 4: Mendelssohn wrote in Rolling Stone about the lemon song that
Speaker 4: was on a Zeppelin I think the first album, maybe
Speaker 4: the second, and he said Robert Plant sings notes only
Speaker 4: a dog come here. And if I remember that from
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy three, you can be certain that Robert Plant
Speaker 4: remembers it. And Jimmy would bitch about the reviews all
Speaker 4: the time, and I would just say, I don't give
Speaker 4: a shit about reviews. You don't understand. Your music is majestic.
Speaker 4: You combine the hard knocking of folk music and Eastern
Speaker 4: stuff and all the scort and years from now your
Speaker 4: music will be remembered, and those magazines and newspapers will
Speaker 4: wrap fish. And sure enough, now Red Zepplin is considered
Speaker 4: one of the greatest. I means eggs All on Main
Speaker 4: Street was panned. It was my favorite Rolling Stones record
Speaker 4: panned when it first came out. So I think part
Speaker 4: of the reason that I have the access to these
Speaker 4: bands was a I was a woman, but I was
Speaker 4: not sleeping with them, and I was not taking drugs
Speaker 4: with them. I was newly married. Richard was much cuter
Speaker 4: than any of them were anyway, and smarter. And when
Speaker 4: I first met Mick Jagger, the first thing I said
Speaker 4: to him was those of the tackiest shoes I've ever seen,
Speaker 4: because he was wearing some sort of sequin Papagallo encrusted shoes.
Speaker 4: It was backstage at an Ever Captain concert, and you
Speaker 4: know that was refreshing to them. People would meet McJagger
Speaker 4: and they'd be like intimidated. I was from New York.
Speaker 4: I wasn't intimidated.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so what I want to know is, obviously
Speaker 3: you're from even though you're of the time, you were
Speaker 3: clearly thinking future generation. Case in point, like prints opening
Speaker 3: for the Stones in La even though he himself is
Speaker 3: a baby boomer, his music and his presentations for Generation Next,
Speaker 3: it's for what's next. So obviously you know you you
Speaker 3: were for thinking who were the other women in that era?
Speaker 2: That was documenting. I know that.
Speaker 3: You know, you spoke of a time where you and
Speaker 3: and fran Leewoods came up together on that the Stones tour,
Speaker 3: But like, were there you.
Speaker 4: Mean the photographer not friend? Was not?
Speaker 2: Not?
Speaker 3: No, I said, I said, friend, forgive me Annie boy,
Speaker 3: I know corrected an.
Speaker 4: Annie had already been a rolling Stone. So Annie had
Speaker 4: already established her reputation as a photographer when she was
Speaker 4: a rolling Stone. We started working together on the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy five Stones tour.
Speaker 2: Before cocks Sucker Blues or that was during.
Speaker 4: That tour where or was that the big fallas coming
Speaker 4: up from the Butterfly stage. Yeah. And also we kept
Speaker 4: thinking every city we went to that they were going
Speaker 4: to get arrested for singing starfucker. Imagine. I'm trying to
Speaker 4: remember other things that, Oh god, there's so much that
Speaker 4: went on on that tour. I remember mixing to me
Speaker 4: at the time that he couldn't get a pill. This
Speaker 4: is a little gross, but he said, you can't get
Speaker 4: a pill for diarrhea, but you can walk into any
Speaker 4: store and buy a gun. And this was in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy five, and I had no idea that you could
Speaker 4: walk into a store in the South and buy a gun.
Speaker 4: I'm from New York City. I'm from the Upper West
Speaker 4: Side of Manhattan. I'd never seen a gun until I
Speaker 4: saw it on that plane with Zeppelin. But it was
Speaker 4: I mean, we weren't pour underground. Atlanta had a Less
Speaker 4: Dramatics store where they sold less dramatics memorabilia. I mean,
Speaker 4: it just was such a different time. It was like,
Speaker 4: for those who don't know, Lester Matos was the racist governor,
Speaker 4: governor or Georgia or something, or mayor of Atlanta or
Speaker 4: some political person very much like Lindsey Graham or somebody today,
Speaker 4: only worse, I mean, more, well more whatever. I'm not
Speaker 4: going to say it, that would be an allegedly defamator.
Speaker 2: We found anything out else about.
Speaker 4: No, I know, I know, but I'm not going to
Speaker 4: say it. Anyway.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is I yeah, he was the governor.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah. So I was sort of a conduit between
Speaker 4: a lot of these guys, like Richard was at RCAA
Speaker 4: records and convinced them to sign David Bowie, Lou Reid
Speaker 4: and the Kinks. So I introduced David Bowie when he
Speaker 4: came to America to Lou Reed and to Iggy Pop,
Speaker 4: both of whom he was very inspired by. Let's put
Speaker 4: it that way, I am, I came to my house.
Speaker 4: They hung out and reduced to come to my house
Speaker 4: because Richard produced his first album, although it really he
Speaker 4: did not do well because Lou was a mess at
Speaker 4: the time and it was a very checkered situation. But
Speaker 4: then Low and Richard didn't talk for years, but then
Speaker 4: Luke called him back and asked him to co produce
Speaker 4: Street Castle with him, which is a great record. And
Speaker 4: so because of our friendship with Lou, or my friendship
Speaker 4: with Patti Smith, or my going on the Stones tour,
Speaker 4: or John Lennon and Yoko letting me in their house
Speaker 4: from nineteen seventy five to eighty to do interviews, Bowie
Speaker 4: would say to me, what's Mick Jagger doing? And Nick
Speaker 4: Jagger would say to me, don't tell that idea to
Speaker 4: Bowie because he'll steal it. Or John Lennon would say
Speaker 4: to me, I just turned stairway to Heaven. Tell Robert
Speaker 4: Plant it's great. And then I would tell that to
Speaker 4: Robert Plant and he'd say he only heard it now.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was like I was friends with Brian Ferry,
Speaker 4: when he was living with Jerry Hall and she was
Speaker 4: dating and I put quotes around that Mick Jagger, and
Speaker 4: I never said a word about it. Because here's the
Speaker 4: other thing. I was like a fly on the wall.
Speaker 4: I would not take note in front of people. If
Speaker 4: we were doing a real interview, i'd have my tape
Speaker 4: recorders on. You've seen them, the analog tape recorders. Yes, machine,
Speaker 4: I have three of them right behind.
Speaker 2: Have I ever producted an interview like digitally? Or they all.
Speaker 4: Hold on, this is really actually, We'll do this tangent
Speaker 4: for a second. Then I'll get back to the why
Speaker 4: these guys and these women trusted me. When I first
Speaker 4: interviewed John Mann and I went with one analog tape
Speaker 4: recorder sony cassette, and the tape fucked up. So he
Speaker 4: let me go back the next day and do it again.
Speaker 4: So from that day on in nineteen seventy whenever it was,
Speaker 4: when did they first move to New York, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It was around seventy two, seventy three. Yeah, From that
Speaker 4: day on, I always took three tape recorders, and one
Speaker 4: of them I would have an external mic, two of them,
Speaker 4: not inevitably one of the three would screw up, but
Speaker 4: at least I had two, so I had a backup.
Speaker 4: Right when I first interviewed Beyonce in two thousand and
Speaker 4: four or five, when was the last Destiny show, I
Speaker 4: think it was two thousand and five, when she was
Speaker 4: on Cover Fair. Yeah, So she looked at my setup
Speaker 4: and she just, very politely, because she's very charming, said
Speaker 4: did you ever think of moving up to digital? And
Speaker 4: I wasn't even embarrassed. I just thought, oh, digital, I
Speaker 4: don't know, probably now. And then I went home and
Speaker 4: I said, Richard, maybe I should get a digital tape
Speaker 4: recorder because people are making fun of me, and so
Speaker 4: a lot of digital tape. He got a digital tape recorder.
Speaker 4: He made a diagram for me that was literally like
Speaker 4: in crayons, as if it were for a five year old,
Speaker 4: with like step one, step two, do this, do that,
Speaker 4: press play color coded on the god damn thing. And
Speaker 4: when I first interviewed Lady Gaga and Ten at the
Speaker 4: Beverly Hills Hotel, I very proudly brought out the digital
Speaker 4: tape recorder along with my free analog cassette and guess
Speaker 4: which one didn't work?
Speaker 2: The digital digital?
Speaker 4: You know, somebody says, sit with what you know. I've
Speaker 4: stuck with what I know. But back to being a
Speaker 4: fly on the wall with these guys and these women
Speaker 4: and whoever I interviewed, and much later on, I always
Speaker 4: respected people's private lives. You have to remember there were
Speaker 4: no there was no cell phones, no Internet, no Instagram,
Speaker 4: no everybody with a telephone with a picture with a camera.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So these guys, especially the Zeppelin, who had wives and
Speaker 4: children back in England, had us girlfriends, let's put it
Speaker 4: that way. These were groupees, and some of them were
Speaker 4: really their girlfriends. Yes, And I thought, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to write about this. They've got wives and kids back
Speaker 4: in England and it's really none of my fucking business,
Speaker 4: and it's nobody else's business either. And I think in
Speaker 4: that way I was trusted, not because I was writing
Speaker 4: like puff pieces about them or anything. I just was
Speaker 4: respectful and not invasive. To the point I may add
Speaker 4: where I was so respectful and not invasive that I
Speaker 4: toured a lot with Elton John. Of course I knew
Speaker 4: he was gay. He was showing me his handbag collection,
Speaker 4: for God's sakes, and I mean we were friends, but
Speaker 4: he wasn't out, and I was not about to out him,
Speaker 4: whereas somebody else might have done that, but then they
Speaker 4: never would have seen him again.
Speaker 2: So then during his prime that he was out or
Speaker 2: it was just like no, no, this.
Speaker 4: Was way before and before he even married that woman Renato,
Speaker 4: who was his engineer. This was in the early seventies,
Speaker 4: and I'd be on the plane with him and we'd
Speaker 4: be screaming and having found instrig and I, you know,
Speaker 4: we just talked very comfortably with each other. I mean,
Speaker 4: I can't explain it. I think in one way this
Speaker 4: is going to sound braggy, but it's not that I
Speaker 4: think I was more sophisticated than a lot of the
Speaker 4: rock journalists. I was from New York. None of them
Speaker 4: had gone to see Pilonius Monk at the Vice, but
Speaker 4: I can assure you not at the age I anyway.
Speaker 4: And I just had a different kind of confidence and
Speaker 4: I wasn't cowed by any of this, and I just
Speaker 4: respected people's private lives. And if somebody told me something
Speaker 4: is off the record, it was off the record to
Speaker 4: this day.
Speaker 3: And can I ask you something, Yeah, you don't have
Speaker 3: to tell a story. You don't have to tell a name,
Speaker 3: But I'm just curious how many secrets will go to
Speaker 3: your grave that you like will never admit to the world. Well,
Speaker 3: I know in general you won't admit it because you
Speaker 3: just said, well.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing. Now, I'll tell you here's the thing.
Speaker 2: How many? How many secrets? The finish? We know that
Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder is not blind? Like how many secrets?
Speaker 4: Although when I did talk to Stevie Wonder and we
Speaker 4: were in the studio and I told him I had
Speaker 4: an analog cassette recorders.
Speaker 3: He said, now I was still a good like he
Speaker 3: knew what side one inside two was at the cassette Nobody.
Speaker 4: Took me into his kitchen, opened the cabinet, pulled out
Speaker 4: from the top shelf a DT recorder and gave it
Speaker 4: to me. I still have it in the packaging in
Speaker 4: one of my storage spaces because Stevie Wonder gave it
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to muse it.
Speaker 4: And then I ran into him and mister Charles last
Speaker 4: year and I went up to him and I said,
Speaker 4: I'm Lisa Robinson from Vanity Fair. Do you remember when
Speaker 4: Annie and I came to photography and you gave me
Speaker 4: that machine? He went, yeah, that DT machine. So you know,
Speaker 4: I was watching Hustlers the other night, and I know
Speaker 4: there is a line in there where Jennifer Lopez says,
Speaker 4: I swear to god, Stevie Wonder came into the club.
Speaker 4: He's not blind. I mean, why would someone pretend to
Speaker 4: be blind? Come on.
Speaker 2: Marketing? How many secrets will you carry? Here?
Speaker 4: There are certain people who have passed away that now
Speaker 4: I feel like I can say certain things about Okay,
Speaker 4: I mean I won't mention all the names. But when
Speaker 4: Sign of the Times came out, I went to hear
Speaker 4: it at a musician's apartment. He had an advanced pressing
Speaker 4: and he kept looking at me to see what I thought,
Speaker 4: And of course I was blown away, I mean blown away.
Speaker 4: And he said to me about another rock star. He
Speaker 4: said to me, this is Mick talking. He the other
Speaker 4: rock star said to me, if he was white, we'd
Speaker 4: all be in trouble and out of business. Now. I
Speaker 4: don't know if that's been printed anywhere, and people know
Speaker 4: who said it to your own. I don't know that
Speaker 4: I would write that, because those two guys are still alive.
Speaker 4: Prince isn't. But I did tell him that, and I
Speaker 4: told him that at his house, and I told him
Speaker 4: several times that he was an unbelievably underrated guitar player.
Speaker 4: And he said, why don't you write that? I said,
Speaker 4: why don't you let me interview you with a tape
Speaker 4: recorder and I'll write whatever you want. You can take
Speaker 4: me taping you. I mean I did that a little
Speaker 4: bit with Kendrick. You know, sometimes in order to make
Speaker 4: somebody feel comfortable, I would say things like, listen, if
Speaker 4: you're really nervous about something and you think I'm going
Speaker 4: to misquote you, although I won't because I transcribed every
Speaker 4: single one of my interviews myself in Longhand and I
Speaker 4: never would missay. I'm the only journalist I trust. Let's
Speaker 4: put it that way. I don't like journalists. I don't
Speaker 4: trust many of them, if any. And what I went
Speaker 4: through in the early seventies with all those guys trying
Speaker 4: to blackpool me, I mean the other women that were around.
Speaker 4: Lillian Roxon, who wrote the Rock Encyclopedia, was my best
Speaker 4: friend at the time. She was a very brilliant Bohemian
Speaker 4: Australian woman and she died in nineteen seventy three. Glorias Davers,
Speaker 4: who edited sixteen magazine. She also died in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 4: I think she edited sixteen magazine. But before sixteen Magazine
Speaker 4: she was a Norman Morel, very high fashion designer model.
Speaker 4: In the forties, she dated Lenny Bruce. She dated Jim Morrison.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure dated is the right word, but whatever,
Speaker 4: those were the only women who were my mentors. The
Speaker 4: rest of the women writing about music were critics. There
Speaker 4: was Ellen Willison New Yorker. There was Janet Maslim from
Speaker 4: the Boston Phoenix. There was Ellen Sander from Life magazine,
Speaker 4: and they reviewed things. They were critics. They didn't do interviews,
Speaker 4: so I would do interviews with the tape on. Then
Speaker 4: I would also hang out with them at after hours clubs,
Speaker 4: at parties when they rehearsed in rehearsal studios in people's bedrooms,
Speaker 4: like Earl mcgrathe used to have parties in New York,
Speaker 4: and the Stones would rehearse with Thereic Claptain and Ronnie Wood.
Speaker 4: One night in that room, I remember Annie taking pictures.
Speaker 4: I would go out to the Andy Warhol's compound Inhampton's
Speaker 4: where they were staying before the seventy five tour. I
Speaker 4: would go I took Michael Jackson to the Studio fifty four,
Speaker 4: the first time he ever went. I took the Clash
Speaker 4: to Studio fifty four. I got the Clash their record deal.
Speaker 4: I got Elvis Costello's record deal. I never made a
Speaker 4: dime from this. I was so stupid. I never thought
Speaker 4: about money. I mean, we didn't think about money. We
Speaker 4: were having fun. We were young. It was the seventies
Speaker 4: and I was getting to see all these cons so
Speaker 4: it's for free, and prior to that I had to
Speaker 4: pay to gopha concert. We were get along the albums
Speaker 4: for free.
Speaker 2: Since you were there when it was rebel music. And
Speaker 2: then it's slowly more. I guess one could say that
Speaker 2: that seventy five tour of the Stones was sorted them
Speaker 2: becoming the seeds of what we now know is the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones more like an institution and less about, you know,
Speaker 2: the Hydrid Daughters, rock rebels that are coming to town
Speaker 2: to pillage. But when do you consider what was the
Speaker 2: year that you saw This is now a business, not
Speaker 2: just you know, rock and rolls.
Speaker 4: I saw it. I saw it right from the beginning.
Speaker 4: I saw it with led Zeppelin when I went to
Speaker 4: see them in Jacksonville in July nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 4: they played to an eighty thousand seat stadium.
Speaker 6: I have a different question, Leicster Bangs. Yeah, can you
Speaker 6: tell our audience about Lester Bangs?
Speaker 3: I was going to say, of your contemporaries, I guess
Speaker 3: Lester has this.
Speaker 2: You know, the cooler than the our you know, you know,
Speaker 2: jaded critic. Was the legend bigger than what? Do you actually?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yes, yes, yes, the myth was greater than was
Speaker 4: drunk Leicester was okay. Richard, my husband was first working
Speaker 4: for Buddhen Records, and then he was working for our
Speaker 4: SAA records, so he had expense accounts. So even though
Speaker 4: we were living in a rent control department and we
Speaker 4: didn't have a lot of money, he had an expense account.
Speaker 4: So I would order Chinese food and we would feed
Speaker 4: and entertain these unbelievably what's the word I used in
Speaker 4: my book, I don't know. It was a thankless test,
Speaker 4: let's put it that way. A lot of these guys
Speaker 4: would come and sleep on our sofa. I felt like
Speaker 4: we were people said we have this salon. We did
Speaker 4: not have a salon. We had a homeless shelter. I mean,
Speaker 4: Dave marsh would come in from Detroit and sleep on
Speaker 4: our sofa. Lenny k lived there for almost a year
Speaker 4: on our Florida living room. You know. John Landa would
Speaker 4: come in from Boston when he was writing at the
Speaker 4: Phoenix before he discovered the future of rock and roll
Speaker 4: in his name was Bruce Springsteen. Richard Meltzer and Lester
Speaker 4: Bangs were there a lot. Richard Meltzer was the real deal.
Speaker 4: He was a better writer, he was smarter, he was crazy.
Speaker 4: Lester was drunk. And Lester was also crazy and drunk
Speaker 4: and obnoxious. Quite frankly, I mean, the myth in many
Speaker 4: of these things was greater than the reality. He has
Speaker 4: been lying so much, not in a small part by
Speaker 4: Cameron Crowe and that movie. But I only remember the
Speaker 4: drunken nights when we had to like whisper, like how
Speaker 4: we're going to get Lester out of here, you know?
Speaker 4: Or Richard Meltzer would be walking around with his shirt
Speaker 4: off in a bottle of scotch. And I don't know
Speaker 4: he's still somewhere alive writing and I haven't read him recently,
Speaker 4: but to me, he was the real thing. And Lester
Speaker 4: got all of the credit and I don't know whether
Speaker 4: he emulated Richard, but Richard was much more interesting and
Speaker 4: insightful I felt anyway.
Speaker 3: So I have my observations in hip hop journalism when
Speaker 3: I saw the shift occur, where like people who I
Speaker 3: truly respected for their opinions were writing about music as
Speaker 3: opposed to now unknown the intern from four years ago
Speaker 3: now getting their cover story, you know, just like you know,
Speaker 3: the the level of hip hop journalism has gone to
Speaker 3: shit in my opinion.
Speaker 2: But for you, when when was music or rock journalism
Speaker 2: at its at its at its best in your opinion?
Speaker 2: And when did you notice that there's a shift? You know,
Speaker 2: do you guys?
Speaker 3: And in terms of no, no, just in terms of
Speaker 3: really giving a good story oftentimes like okay, I know
Speaker 3: that if like say today Pitchfork, sometimes they'll pan in
Speaker 3: an album just to impress their contemporaries to you know,
Speaker 3: in that Lester Bangs way where you're not writing your
Speaker 3: honest opinion about something you want to do a performative.
Speaker 4: Well it might have been his honest opinion. I mean,
Speaker 4: he had very many run ins with you read I
Speaker 4: don't really Here's the thing, I never read this. I
Speaker 4: don't know I did what I did because I wanted
Speaker 4: to read what I wanted to read. I mean, Tony
Speaker 4: Morrison always said, write the book you want to read,
Speaker 4: it's like, or write the book that you want to write,
Speaker 4: or whatever. I don't know. Listen, when the Roots started
Speaker 4: playing instruments, why did you do that? Hip hop bands
Speaker 4: weren't playing instruments. You did that? Why because you wanted
Speaker 4: to hear a band that was doing hip hop play
Speaker 4: instruments or doing rap play instruments. I did what I
Speaker 4: did because nobody else was doing it, So I mean
Speaker 4: I never even thought about it. I just did it.
Speaker 4: And I really didn't read a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't think I've ever looked at Patlarch in my life.
Speaker 4: I didn't look complex. I didn't look at I maybe
Speaker 4: looked at the Vibe and the Source and Rolling Stone
Speaker 4: a little bit, but I never really read Rolling Stone
Speaker 4: because I didn't like the person who owned it, and
Speaker 4: I didn't like the way women were treated in that office.
Speaker 4: And it is really a badge of honor as far
Speaker 4: as I'm concerned. And I never wrote for them. And
Speaker 4: I'm being really blunt and frank with you. I'll probably
Speaker 4: get a lot of haters about a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 4: But I just I didn't really read it. I read
Speaker 4: Cream Magazine a little bit. I mean I read my
Speaker 4: husband's column. He did a Rewire Yourself years before anybody
Speaker 4: was writing about technology. He wrote a book called The
Speaker 4: Video Primer. Richard said two things that stick out in
Speaker 4: my mind that is so brilliant. One was everybody kept
Speaker 4: saying in the seventies, who's the ex Beatles? Who's an
Speaker 4: ex Beatles? Rich band is going to be the next Beatles?
Speaker 4: And Richard said, the next Beatles is going to be
Speaker 4: a machine. This was in nineteen seventy one. Okay, so
Speaker 4: that's who I was married to. He also said about musicians,
Speaker 4: because one minute we were managing some musicians, which really
Speaker 4: was not a smart move. But he always said managing
Speaker 4: an act is like running backwards holding up a mirror.
Speaker 4: So you know, I just didn't read this stuff. So
Speaker 4: I can't say when I think it shifted, if it
Speaker 4: did shift what I read I read. I don't know
Speaker 4: what did I read rock journalism. I'm not really because
Speaker 4: nobody was doing what I was interested in. I was
Speaker 4: doing what I was interested in, And I'm not saying
Speaker 4: that to Sam conceited or anything, because a lot of
Speaker 4: people weren't interested in what I was running about. But
Speaker 4: I was much more interested in the human side, and
Speaker 4: I wasn't seeing that in too many places, certainly not
Speaker 4: when I started, and I'm not even sure now.
Speaker 5: I mean, I occasionally read a profile in the New
Speaker 5: York Times magazine section about somebody I'm interested in, and
Speaker 5: I'll stop halfway through because it just so long.
Speaker 4: I mean, I also feel leave somebody wanting more. You know.
Speaker 4: It's like I take it as the biggest compliment when
Speaker 4: I've done cover stories and Vanity Fair and people have
Speaker 4: said to me, oh my god, I wish it was longer. Job.
Speaker 4: That's how I feel.
Speaker 3: My final question to you is with with the life
Speaker 3: that you you lived in all of your archives and
Speaker 3: memories and whatnot, are you actively trying to seek.
Speaker 2: I feel like the next step for you is is
Speaker 2: basically either as a movie or as a series like
Speaker 2: a Netflix series.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you're this this is a no brainer. Has
Speaker 3: has anyone who approached you about you know?
Speaker 4: The couple of people who have, I wouldn't want to
Speaker 4: really work with you, want to do something, I'll do
Speaker 4: something with you. I mean I'm serious. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think between now and I don't know what I
Speaker 4: want to do. I do want to place all this stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, I want to sell it because I need
Speaker 4: the money, but I also want to place all this
Speaker 4: stuff with people who love it. That's why I first
Speaker 4: talked to you about the albums here, because I don't
Speaker 4: want to see these albums go to some record store
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn where somebody's going to buy one of this
Speaker 4: and three of that and two it. I just want
Speaker 4: the collection to be with someone who loves it. You know.
Speaker 4: Q Tip actually did make his way over here one
Speaker 4: night to look at them, and he started looking up
Speaker 4: every album and appraising it and figuring out the prices,
Speaker 4: and then he said, I'm sending my assistant back to
Speaker 4: see you next week and we're going to do this.
Speaker 4: And that was no, that was one, two, three, three
Speaker 4: and a half years ago.
Speaker 2: I think that's what I said. I'm coming over there
Speaker 2: to scoop them.
Speaker 4: Okay, after I get my second vaccine shot. I have
Speaker 4: never been so happy in my life when I lowered
Speaker 4: the age and I'm old enough finally to get this vaccine.
Speaker 4: But honestly, I want the archives, the tapes. I do
Speaker 4: want it to go, maybe to an institution where people
Speaker 4: can listen to it and study it and learn from it,
Speaker 4: or do a series of podcasts, or do a series
Speaker 4: of documentaries. I don't know. The problem is I always
Speaker 4: was too busy just earning a living and getting through
Speaker 4: every day. And now starting this serious radio show, which
Speaker 4: is just once a week, I'll be able to talk,
Speaker 4: which I love in writing. I don't know if I
Speaker 4: want to write another book. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 4: know who else I want to interview. I mean, you
Speaker 4: talk about how did I know the future of rock
Speaker 4: and roll with CBGB's I didn't. I just was there
Speaker 4: when it happened and it just seemed right. It was fun.
Speaker 4: If I had been able to predict the future, first
Speaker 4: of all, as Friendly for It says, I would pick
Speaker 4: better a lot of tickets. But also I would have
Speaker 4: known about hip hop before I did, because that's inexcusable
Speaker 4: that I was living in New York City and I
Speaker 4: didn't even know that this was going on for quite
Speaker 4: a while. Because as I said, it's still the music
Speaker 4: that it's on my iPod, that in Frank Sinatra and
Speaker 4: some Florio's Mark Andero corner.
Speaker 2: Wow, well, thank.
Speaker 4: You, Steve. You wanted to ask me something?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, why why aren't you just airing these
Speaker 6: these legendary interviews that you have as as complete as
Speaker 6: a podcast as a podcast?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well because somebody hasn't made me the right offer yet.
Speaker 6: When they do, I will because that's yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean the show I'm doing for serious is just
Speaker 4: a call and show because I wanted to do something
Speaker 4: like Steven A.
Speaker 2: Smith.
Speaker 4: Does you know I wanted people.
Speaker 2: Calling in like sports, but for music.
Speaker 4: Well he does that for sports, I'm going to do
Speaker 4: it for music. Gla. I could do it for basketball too.
Speaker 4: I could name you the starting five on all thirty teams.
Speaker 2: You know what they say, no one loves the Knicks
Speaker 2: more than you do.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, I'm one of those long man.
Speaker 2: So I know you're happy about three wins in a
Speaker 2: row that they had.
Speaker 4: Come on. At least they're competitive, at least it's watchable.
Speaker 4: It's not like it was. Julius Ramball is good. I
Speaker 4: love him Manual quickly, and don't even get me started
Speaker 4: on the new Jersey nets because that's the whole other thing.
Speaker 2: Well, Lisa, we thank you.
Speaker 3: We've been trying to make this happen for years. I'm
Speaker 3: proud that you got your technology set.
Speaker 4: Up on just to be able to do zoom. Yeah,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 2: I have to hire an.
Speaker 4: IT guy to do that.
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, I thought I was going to look at.
Speaker 4: Those albums and seriously, yeah.
Speaker 2: I just want to say I'm proud of you getting
Speaker 2: over your technology fears and doing that because you know,
Speaker 2: you and I often had the flintstone bird writing a message,
Speaker 2: sending pigeons to our windows kind of relationships. So one
Speaker 2: day I'm gonna get you use an iPhone for real.
Speaker 4: I have an iPhone.
Speaker 2: I just.
Speaker 4: I listen to music on it. I go to YouTube,
Speaker 4: and I Google, and I make phone calls. I'm going
Speaker 4: when I traveled, when I used to travel.
Speaker 2: You up to two thousand. Okay, please Robinson, Ladies and
Speaker 2: Joe in Quest left Supreme. We thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Fan Takeelo and Shuka Steve, thank you. We will see
Speaker 2: you on the next program. Thank you ladies and Joe.
Speaker 4: Okay, thanks guys, Yo, what's up?
Speaker 2: It's Fonte. Make sure you keep up with us on
Speaker 2: Instagram at quels and let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: Who should be next to sit down with us, don't
Speaker 2: forget to subscribe to our podcast, all Right Peace.
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