Speaker 1: The Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the Quest Loft Show. What
Speaker 1: can I Say? In nineteen seventy two, at the ripe
Speaker 1: age of fifteen, our guest today took my dream job.
Speaker 1: But being as though I was just a year old
Speaker 1: and unable to read, or write or form sentences or thoughts,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to forgive him this one time only thank you.
Speaker 1: But I will say during this period he will have
Speaker 1: conducted career defining both for him and the artist, career
Speaker 1: defining interviews at Rolling Stone Magazine with the likes of
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Elton, John Neil Young, Joni Mitchell,
Speaker 1: led Zapplin, The Eagles, Fleetwood, Mac, The Who, and.
Speaker 2: So on and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: As a filmmaker, I mean, he's pretty much, I believe,
Speaker 1: given us the definitive movies of our day, be it
Speaker 1: A Fast Times of Richmond, High Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire,
Speaker 1: Vanilla Sky, and for Almost Famous, of which he is
Speaker 1: an Academy Award recipient for Best Screenplay. I mean, the
Speaker 1: list goes on and oning. He's currently right now working
Speaker 1: on a film based on the life of Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: Right now, he is promoting his memoir of his time
Speaker 1: as a music critic called The Uncool. Please please welcome
Speaker 1: to the Quest Left Show QLs. Cameron Crow, how you
Speaker 1: doing right now?
Speaker 3: I'm good. I'm psyched to be talking with you again.
Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate this. So I
Speaker 1: had a situation last week. I was hanging with John Mayer,
Speaker 1: and I believe that there's the idea of questlove, and
Speaker 1: then I also believe there's the actual quest love. So
Speaker 1: one of the most disappointing true quirks about me, kind
Speaker 1: of in a Larry David way, is that I normally
Speaker 1: don't talk shop with my peers. Of course, on social
Speaker 1: media and books and films everywhere.
Speaker 2: My entire career is a.
Speaker 1: Giant platform for me to spew out my unsolicited thoughts
Speaker 1: about music.
Speaker 2: But I noticed that I.
Speaker 1: Tend to back off and talking about music. However, being
Speaker 1: as though this is our second conversation with each other.
Speaker 1: He gave me the honor of doing a live Q
Speaker 1: and A with you some time ago, and when I
Speaker 1: walked away, I was like, wow, Like okay, So maybe
Speaker 1: I have to rewrite that narrative and say that I
Speaker 1: enjoy talking shop with other musicians.
Speaker 2: It's just that sometimes, for instance.
Speaker 1: Like I was at a party like three weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and then someone just came up to me and said.
Speaker 2: Coust love real quick.
Speaker 1: The most important line that Curtis Mayfield's Ever, you know, yeah, Ever.
Speaker 2: Said, and I'm like eating shrimp.
Speaker 1: I'm like, and I know that's my fault because I've
Speaker 1: led people to believe that I'm open to all music discussion.
Speaker 2: But in this particular case.
Speaker 1: I would imagine had I been born a decade and
Speaker 1: a half earlier, I would have probably wound up on
Speaker 1: your path or at some sort of level to that.
Speaker 3: So it's the crime of you knowing so many different
Speaker 3: corners of culture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, they'll ask you about music. They probably
Speaker 3: checked out what the gifts you were giving during COVID,
Speaker 3: which was very music centric. But you're like a film
Speaker 3: guy beyond many, if not most, So your knowledge of
Speaker 3: film is so particular. And also why it's I don't know,
Speaker 3: there are many avenues to take.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll ask you because I'm using no format today,
Speaker 1: no notes or whatever, so I'll just we're just having
Speaker 1: a conversation. Yeah, yeah, How did you know that you
Speaker 1: were a film guy?
Speaker 3: Because I loved film always as a kid. They my
Speaker 3: mom and sometimes my mom and dad would sneak me
Speaker 3: into R rated movies just because Mike Nichols. I should
Speaker 3: know about Mike Nichols. Stuff like that, you know, David
Speaker 3: Lean and all kinds of stuff. It just seemed like
Speaker 3: no man's land in terms of a dream, Like I
Speaker 3: never went to film school obviously, maybe not obviously, but
Speaker 3: I never thought that that was accessible to a guy
Speaker 3: from San Diego who wasn't connected in it any way.
Speaker 3: But for some reason I had no problem walking into
Speaker 3: a dressing room and asking a band that I loved,
Speaker 3: like the questions that I wanted answers to. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: because rock was a little less huge then and film
Speaker 3: was always huge and still is huge. But once I
Speaker 3: got a taste of it, you know, it's like it is.
Speaker 3: It's a rush like no other. And particularly when you
Speaker 3: show something that's been in your head for a long
Speaker 3: time and you've written it, you've edited it, you know
Speaker 3: this well when you finally put it in front of people,
Speaker 3: and the shit that they pick up on it's sometimes
Speaker 3: it's the smallest thing and they're all over it. That's
Speaker 3: a thrill. It's a different kind of thrill than writing
Speaker 3: rock writing particularly, But I don't know. It's like collect
Speaker 3: as many experiences as you can was kind of my thing.
Speaker 1: How long was it the lead up of you getting
Speaker 1: the green light to do Fast Times? What was the
Speaker 1: seed that was Plannet that said, you know what, after
Speaker 1: this last article I turn in, Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pursue film. Did you have any impostor syndrome or any
Speaker 1: of those things? Like can I do this?
Speaker 3: I started asking for film assignments from Rolling Stone towards
Speaker 3: the end of like a big run that I had
Speaker 3: from fifteen to twenty two. I started asking for film stories.
Speaker 3: Richard Dreyfus was the first one that I did. And
Speaker 3: Dreyfus fantastic and so different from the musicians, you know,
Speaker 3: like just wondrously narcissistic and fun like he was at
Speaker 3: the peak of his kind of like Close Encounters phase
Speaker 3: and everything Jaws to Close Encounters, like Biggest Star going right,
Speaker 3: And he he said, you know, if I do the
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone interview, I'd like to do it differently, Like
Speaker 3: what if you ask a lot of people who've worked
Speaker 3: with me what they think of me, and then bring
Speaker 3: that back to me.
Speaker 2: He wanted an oral history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he was like, bring me the oral history
Speaker 3: of what people have said about me, and I'll respond
Speaker 3: to it, which was wild. And so I talked to
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of people about Richard Dreyfuss and did
Speaker 3: this interview where I basically threw stuff to him about
Speaker 3: things people were about him, good or bad, and he
Speaker 3: was fucking ferocious about it. It was amazing. And the
Speaker 3: next assignment I got that was film centric was Sissy
Speaker 3: Spasic and that lit a fire because for daughter, it
Speaker 3: was it was before coal miner's daughter. She had done
Speaker 3: Carrie and bad Lands and Three Women with Altman and
Speaker 3: you'll love this. So they say, Annie Leebowitz is going
Speaker 3: to come with you to Equipment Texas. You can see
Speaker 3: Sissy Equipment Texas where she's visiting her hometown and her mother.
Speaker 3: And so I get there with Annie, who was, you know,
Speaker 3: a titan of photography. So that was a big deal
Speaker 3: to be hanging with Annie in Texas and we show
Speaker 3: up to see Sissy and Sissy goes. I got to
Speaker 3: ask you to come with me. I got a little
Speaker 3: adventure I have to go on. They're trying to get
Speaker 3: me to play Loretta Lynn in this movie called Coal
Speaker 3: Miner's Daughter, and I just I can't do it. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do it. It's just it doesn't feel
Speaker 3: right to me. But can you come with me to
Speaker 3: I think New Orleans maybe, And we're gonna go to
Speaker 3: a Loretta Lynn concert. And it's gonna be a little
Speaker 3: rough for me because I'm gonna have to, you know,
Speaker 3: turn her down, but we'll go. We'll get one to
Speaker 3: go with me. And so we all went to Loretta
Speaker 3: show and Amir, I gotta tell you, Sissy boards the
Speaker 3: bus where Loretta is with her husband du brings Annie
Speaker 3: and me with her. I think Loretta Lynn closed Sissy's
Speaker 3: basic in about twelve minutes. She was so classic and
Speaker 3: big and a big character and so warm. And then
Speaker 3: she goes on stage and starts doing this show and
Speaker 3: Cissy is like already putting the performance together, and so
Speaker 3: she left committing to the part that.
Speaker 2: Night started back out of it and.
Speaker 3: So excited and that rhythm of how it worked, and
Speaker 3: it was so hands on with material and discussing characters
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. The fuse was lit. And then
Speaker 3: I found somebody who I knew who was a rock manager,
Speaker 3: Art Linson. I don't know if you ever met him.
Speaker 3: He managed Nils Lofgren and Nils's group Grin and the
Speaker 3: label was called Spin Dizzy that Art ran, so I
Speaker 3: knew Art and Art started to be a presence in
Speaker 3: the movie business producing Jonathan Demi and they Universal like
Speaker 3: kind of picked up an option on Fast Times the
Speaker 3: book and gave it to like their resident rock ish guy.
Speaker 3: Art and Art loved the book and said, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm going to teach you how to write a screenplay.
Speaker 3: You're the cheapest person we could find to do this,
Speaker 3: and if we make it cheaply, we might be able
Speaker 3: to sneak this movie through. And that was Fast Times. Wow,
Speaker 3: I know. So it really was all because of rock
Speaker 3: journalism in a way that Art said, I'm gonna teach you.
Speaker 1: I will say that Coal Miner's daughters probably it made
Speaker 1: an impression on me.
Speaker 2: Like I didn't hear of Loretta Lynne.
Speaker 1: But since that moment that I became very familiar with
Speaker 1: her and her music and all that stuff, and so
Speaker 1: to hear that you were there at the impetus of
Speaker 1: it then, I mean, you know, she was still at
Speaker 1: the height of Kerry and all that stuff. But when
Speaker 1: you saw the end result like to make an impression
Speaker 1: on you as far as music films are concerned or
Speaker 1: big time.
Speaker 3: I loved it and I thought Sissy deserved the Academy Award.
Speaker 3: She's amazing in it. She's not pushing, she's not trying,
Speaker 3: she just is it. And I went back and checked
Speaker 3: that movie out not too long ago, just kind of
Speaker 3: wanting to look at the so called BIOPI biopic and
Speaker 3: that was definitely top five and Buddy Holly story and stuff,
Speaker 3: but check it out. Check out Coal Miner's Daughter Sometime.
Speaker 3: It is the slowest, easiest wade into telling the story.
Speaker 3: It just is character. It's time and place, which you
Speaker 3: crush in the Sly Lives. Time and place is like
Speaker 3: so important. And I saw it and I was just like,
Speaker 3: you know, the whole drive to have, like, my Josh,
Speaker 3: here's the person that you're gonna see the life of.
Speaker 3: It's like, man, you don't need it with the right pace.
Speaker 3: It's like an invisible gas that just pulls you in.
Speaker 3: And that's Coal Miner's.
Speaker 2: Daughter for you.
Speaker 1: Though, with biopics and personally, I always thought there's a
Speaker 1: danger and telling the soup to nuts story of a
Speaker 1: life where it's hard to really cover it all. And
Speaker 1: I always thought that, man, why doesn't someone just talk
Speaker 1: about a very very specific time period, Like when they
Speaker 1: were first talking about the James Brown biopic, I said, man,
Speaker 1: you could probably get the essence of who James Brown
Speaker 1: is if you talk about April fourth, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which I would thinks this is on the fourth, It
Speaker 1: might be the fifth of the day after, but this
Speaker 1: is right after Martin Luther King has assassinated James Brown.
Speaker 1: Fans know that there was a concert schedule in Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and every city in America is in civil unrest and
Speaker 1: there's riots everywhere, and the mayor of Boston's like, mister Brown,
Speaker 1: if you give us permission to broadcast this on television,
Speaker 1: I think this will keep people in the house and watching.
Speaker 2: You instead of destroying Boston.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, James Brown say Boston because there were
Speaker 1: no riots that night, because everyone was in watching and
Speaker 1: you know, he yeah, his concerns too, Like wait a minute,
Speaker 1: so I got to give a twice as long performance.
Speaker 1: You're broadcasting me, you're not paying me extra money, like
Speaker 1: he's the business part of James Brown's at work, Like
Speaker 1: I know, like what's in this for me? Like I'm
Speaker 1: giving the the cow for free. But I always thought, man,
Speaker 1: if you told the story, like very specific stories instead
Speaker 1: of the entire biopick.
Speaker 3: Right when it's a history lesson, you lose me. If
Speaker 3: it's characters that are not cut out human type, people
Speaker 3: that say things, you know, that are completely dealing with
Speaker 3: the Wikipedia issues of the artists, it's like, you lose me.
Speaker 3: I don't know. You can do soup to nuts if
Speaker 3: you have a reason to do soup to nuts. As
Speaker 3: soon as they tell you soup to nuts can't be done,
Speaker 3: someone will pull it off. But yeah, most of the
Speaker 3: time you at that sweet spot because it's filled with
Speaker 3: story and you don't need to You're right, I mean,
Speaker 3: James Brown in Boston, you get it all. You get
Speaker 3: the music, you get time and place, you get it all.
Speaker 3: I guess it's case by case. Citizen Kane is Soup
Speaker 3: to Nuts? Is it a biopic? Kind of? But it
Speaker 3: tells us a greater story than sit down. I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell you about a life with Cepia toned glimpses
Speaker 3: of my childhood, you know.
Speaker 1: But that's also like a first of its kind, so
Speaker 1: I could imagine I wanted to know, like if that
Speaker 1: were to come out in the mid Ausin, it would
Speaker 1: have just been the office, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean that's funny.
Speaker 1: Are you telling the entire story of Joni Mitchell? Is
Speaker 1: this a very specific part of her life that you're
Speaker 1: focusing on.
Speaker 3: It's chunks, it's not one slice, it's a couple, it's
Speaker 3: some slices, and it's in a context that I think
Speaker 3: it holds together for a bigger story. To be slightly vague,
Speaker 3: but there's a way to tell her story, which is
Speaker 3: why I called up her place and just said, like,
Speaker 3: I have a take on this. You know, whenever you're
Speaker 3: interested in anything like this, just come to me and
Speaker 3: well I'll pitch it out and see what you think.
Speaker 3: And they're like, now get over here.
Speaker 1: How easy was it to convince her? Because right now,
Speaker 1: the most frustrating, frustrating part of this whole process that
Speaker 1: I'm in right now is conveying to my subjects or
Speaker 1: my dream subjects. Yeah, the urgency of time running on
Speaker 1: the clock right now. And for a lot of people
Speaker 1: sharing their story, rappers especially, you know, this means that oh,
Speaker 1: the second I start looking in the rear view mirror
Speaker 1: that now, that means my career is over. This is
Speaker 1: not just with film, like trying to get rappers to
Speaker 1: do memoirs to keep a track a thing. It's almost
Speaker 1: like there's this rule like if I look back, then
Speaker 1: I'm dead already, which I don't believe in just what
Speaker 1: I've learned and Slide and the Earth Wind and Fire
Speaker 1: doc is memory fades, you know for a lot of these.
Speaker 3: Things, yes, and turns into anecdotes with cute little punchlines.
Speaker 1: Right and there's the whole kind of revisionist history thing,
Speaker 1: like your version of how it happened. And it's such
Speaker 1: a dangerous spot. And I can't convey to people enough
Speaker 1: the importance of pictures, writing things down, saving posters.
Speaker 3: Yes, you can taste it when you have that stuff
Speaker 3: from the day and it's souvenir from the day. It's important.
Speaker 1: So this wasn't a hard pitch to convince her, like
Speaker 1: now's the time to tell your story.
Speaker 3: No, because there are a lot of people that had
Speaker 3: been coming before me with really bad ideas, and so
Speaker 3: I had the benefit of their failures in probably not
Speaker 3: knowing her well enough. So if a few of them,
Speaker 3: I think came in not really knowing her history. It's
Speaker 3: like the Barry Gordy thing. You know, if you send
Speaker 3: me a letter and it's b A R R y.
Speaker 3: You didn't take the time to know how my name
Speaker 3: was spelled, and I can't take the time to know
Speaker 3: what you want from me. Goodbye? You know, I love that.
Speaker 3: This is what's interesting. Tell me if you've run across this.
Speaker 3: Success creates eight different viewpoints and people raising their hands
Speaker 3: and say it was me, it was me, it was me,
Speaker 3: it was me, And the memory does morph into a
Speaker 3: different thing, and it's everybody kind of disagrees because they're
Speaker 3: trying to take credit for a success a failed project.
Speaker 3: The memories are perfect because they're all about who to
Speaker 3: blame for it. Memories are dead on you know, there's
Speaker 3: not it's not Rashamon. It's like they pretty much figure
Speaker 3: that it's one person and one decision, and they're really
Speaker 3: clear about it. So success breeds all the conflicting accounts
Speaker 3: unless you have the stuff from the day, like.
Speaker 1: Do you know when you're being talked to by someone
Speaker 1: well trained media that says the right things and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and like, how do you know.
Speaker 2: You're getting the right story?
Speaker 1: And was your young age a part of the dismantling
Speaker 1: or the putting my guard down and revealing to you
Speaker 1: because you know you're getting major stories out of these
Speaker 1: acts and you know who otherwise would probably be guarded
Speaker 1: with anyone else.
Speaker 3: I never had the feeling that, like, oh, oh, it's
Speaker 3: a plus that I'm fifteen or sixteen. I was always
Speaker 3: kind of like hoping I didn't get asked how old
Speaker 3: I was, and hoping that I could seem adult like
Speaker 3: but not in a precocious way. Nobody really busted me
Speaker 3: on my age, no once, but to me, I had
Speaker 3: no choice in it. I just had to do it.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't not do it. I loved some of
Speaker 3: the stories that I'd read. I loved Ben Fong Torres
Speaker 3: doing these interviews with Marvin Gay, with David Crosby, and
Speaker 3: Joan Winner's interview with John Lennon. It's like, Wow, this
Speaker 3: is really revealing and confessional, and that made me want
Speaker 3: to collect stories like that, Like I just wanted to
Speaker 3: be the person who could say the right thing and
Speaker 3: get people to talk like Dick Cavin on TV was one.
Speaker 2: Of my favorite.
Speaker 3: So I didn't have a choice. I just did it.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until later that I kind of hit
Speaker 3: a wall and took on so many assignments that I
Speaker 3: just felt like I was starting to take a long
Speaker 3: time to turn stories in. I started Chuck Young at
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone started doing these stories that I would have
Speaker 3: done really well in a first person way that was
Speaker 3: kind of gregarious and amazing, and he wrote about the
Speaker 3: sex pistols, and I just felt like, I'm washed up,
Speaker 3: you know, And that was when I went home and
Speaker 3: decided to start writing this story that ended up being
Speaker 3: Fast Times at Ridgemal hint.
Speaker 1: At the age of twenty, you already felt that you
Speaker 1: were a veteran, A washed up veteran.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When I first came to Rolling Stone, there were
Speaker 3: people that were at the end of their run, and
Speaker 3: I remember what it looked like, I remember what it
Speaker 3: sounded like. I remember there was one guy who had
Speaker 3: written epic stories, and the thing that they whispered about
Speaker 3: him behind his back was he's so fucked up on
Speaker 3: writer's block now he can't be in a room with
Speaker 3: a typewriter. He starts melting down with anxiety. I'm like,
Speaker 3: that'll never be me. And then I never became that guy.
Speaker 3: But I started to just freeze up about deadlines, which
Speaker 3: was very scary, and so it was time to kind
Speaker 3: of move on. I know, the exact moment had happened.
Speaker 3: There were two things that happened in one day. There
Speaker 3: was a Neil Young cover story, and I'd gone on
Speaker 3: the bus with Neil Young and Joel Bernstein my Palle,
Speaker 3: the photographer. We had toured with Neil and it was
Speaker 3: great stuff. I mean, he canceled a three album set
Speaker 3: that had already been printed up and pressed and stuff.
Speaker 3: And the Warner Brothers guys came out and said, you
Speaker 3: can't cancel decade and He's like, I can't. I got
Speaker 3: new music that I'm doing with Emmy Lou Harris and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's just I've moved on. These guys are like
Speaker 3: it's gonna cost us half a million dollars. He's like,
Speaker 3: I can't help it, man. You know, it was like
Speaker 3: it was the greatest story. And Elliott Roberts called up,
Speaker 3: his manager called me up and said, you know what,
Speaker 3: Neil doesn't want the story to come out. He's not
Speaker 3: gonna pose for the cover. And Neil, he just got
Speaker 3: into it. He does, He's moved on. It's like moved on.
Speaker 3: It was ten days ago. You know. No, no, he's
Speaker 3: a different guy.
Speaker 2: Now wait, can you give it backstory? So this is
Speaker 2: what year is this?
Speaker 3: It's seventy seven. I know it's exactly seventy seven. For
Speaker 3: a couple different reasons. He had fallen in love with
Speaker 3: the Sweet Home Alabama, the Leonard skinnerd song that was
Speaker 3: kind of a call out supposedly, so it was anyway, amir,
Speaker 3: it was a great story. He liked it, he loved it.
Speaker 3: He gave me a cassette to give to them because
Speaker 3: I had written about them of three songs, Powderfinger, Captain Kennedy,
Speaker 3: and I forget the third one, but he gave me
Speaker 3: a cassette, which I gave to Leonard Skinnyard.
Speaker 2: What was their response?
Speaker 3: Fuck? Yeah was their response? They love to Neil, it
Speaker 3: was it was like, I don't know, it's like one
Speaker 3: of those kind of Jobiz feuds that was wasn't really true.
Speaker 2: It was just it wasn't kids with Lamar.
Speaker 3: I get it, Okay, it wasn't it wasn't like secretly
Speaker 3: crushing out on each other. So I had that story
Speaker 3: and it was kind of like I knew I was
Speaker 3: gonna make that deadline and it would be good, and
Speaker 3: though I'd been missing deadlines lately at Rolling Stone. So anyway, Elliott,
Speaker 3: the manager calls me up and says, cancel the story.
Speaker 3: Neil wants it canceled, won't post with the cover, doesn't
Speaker 3: approve anything. It's canceled. And I'm like, I'm gonna get fired.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna lose everything. I'm gonna lose everything in Elliott Roberts,
Speaker 3: classic funny guy. He had a line that I will
Speaker 3: never forget. He's like, yeah, I know, I got to
Speaker 3: get rid of that kid. And I'm like, you're fucking
Speaker 3: making jokes, and I was. And he called back two
Speaker 3: days later and said, I talked to Neil, go ahead
Speaker 3: and go with the story. He doesn't want you to
Speaker 3: get in trouble, which was cool of him. But the
Speaker 3: other thing that happened on that first day was John
Speaker 3: Belushi called out of nowhere the Rolling Stone office and
Speaker 3: asked to talk to me. And I had met him,
Speaker 3: I think twice. Mitch Glazer took me to the blues bar,
Speaker 3: and I had met him there. He told me an
Speaker 3: amazing drummer joke. Who was It was like Buddy rib
Speaker 3: about Buddy Rich And I don't know. He was very cool, right,
Speaker 3: but I hardly knew him. And he said, look, hey man,
Speaker 3: I'm just calling you because like they're gonna put me
Speaker 3: on the cover of Rolling Stone. And I asked for
Speaker 3: you to be the writer, and they said no, he
Speaker 3: takes too long, and so they gave it to Chuck Young.
Speaker 3: But I just wanted you to know like I asked
Speaker 3: for you. I was like, I'm washed up. I'm washed up.
Speaker 3: There they're telling artists that I'm not efficient with deadlines.
Speaker 3: This is bad.
Speaker 1: How common was accessibility to artists in the seventies, Like
Speaker 1: how often would you get unsolicited phone calls?
Speaker 3: You'd get a phone call or too before the article
Speaker 3: was published, Like they would be up late staring at
Speaker 3: the ceiling and going why did I say this and that?
Speaker 3: So you'd get calls to clarify, like I just want
Speaker 3: to can I redo my talk about Leonard Skinner? You know,
Speaker 3: like you'd get that call, but then no calls after
Speaker 3: the story came out. I mean, I think Sissy spacet
Speaker 3: called and said I liked this story you wrote. But
Speaker 3: that was the only time that happened. Sometimes you might
Speaker 3: run into them later and get a comment, but mostly
Speaker 3: that would happen only to like social calls from somebody
Speaker 3: who's in the sphere, the actual entertainment sphere. I think
Speaker 3: Jan Wenner would get those calls because I remember sitting
Speaker 3: at the Rolling Stone office as a little guy, and
Speaker 3: it'd be like fucking John Lennon on one Jan and
Speaker 3: I'm like what And then you hear him going like John,
Speaker 3: how you doing? Like what? Oh?
Speaker 2: So you go okay.
Speaker 1: Would you often wonder what they thought about it, or
Speaker 1: even parts that you might have to keep in that
Speaker 1: could be seen as a problem in the future or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 3: It's a really good question. Sometimes you have to fight
Speaker 3: for the thing that they made off the record, and
Speaker 3: if you're on the road for a couple days at
Speaker 3: least you know you're in these situations where you're not
Speaker 3: always just a guy in a hotel room with a
Speaker 3: pointing a microphone at them. You're or sometimes in the
Speaker 3: back of a car or backstage and they're like, you
Speaker 3: know that guy that just came in, let me tell
Speaker 3: you about that guy, you know, and it's like an
Speaker 3: amazing story. It's like, right, that's off the record. Of course,
Speaker 3: you're like, of course, but then you could come back
Speaker 3: later and say, you know what that story you told
Speaker 3: me backstage. Here's why I think it works because it's
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and like eight
Speaker 3: times out of ten they'd say, Okay, you gotta use it.
Speaker 3: But that collaboration doesn't happen so much anymore because you
Speaker 3: don't have the time with the person you do because
Speaker 3: you have a creative experience with I would imagine quite
Speaker 3: a few of your heroes. That's a different thing. This
Speaker 3: is a negotiation sometimes.
Speaker 1: My obsession with Rolling Stone really stemmed from well one
Speaker 1: we had a subscription to the house.
Speaker 2: I lived in a Billboard cash box.
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone cream subscription household, like any music magazine, always
Speaker 1: came to my parents' crib.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: For the most part, I would be fascinated with the
Speaker 1: lead review because I love the idea of like a
Speaker 1: illustration and then seeing the star rating and stuff. And
Speaker 1: so I started adorning the walls in my house with
Speaker 1: those leeve reviews. And you know, by the time I'm fifteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's pretty much like how I know, you know,
Speaker 1: when you talk about past the original generation of Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: like I'll say that his name.
Speaker 2: Is kN Tucker, Yeah, kN Tucker.
Speaker 1: So I knew besides Stevie Wonder's songs in the Key
Speaker 1: of Life, it was very rare to see a black
Speaker 1: live review and it was the police issue of Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: I believe that this is when Zennata Mindata came out
Speaker 1: and they had the cover. kN Tucker gave Prince's Dirty
Speaker 1: Mind the Lee review in Rolling Stone, and at that time,
Speaker 1: Prince was just one of the artists that would adorn
Speaker 1: my older sister's walls. So I kind of had Prince
Speaker 1: in the right on Team Beat thing. Not that I
Speaker 1: knew the difference between like critical writing of music and fanzines,
Speaker 1: but even I knew that Team Beat and Ride On
Speaker 1: were like frothy articles and you weren't going to get
Speaker 1: anything deep as opposed to Rolling Stone. And I remember, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, they're tweeting this guy like he's a
Speaker 1: real serious person.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: At the time, I only knew like the singles, and
Speaker 1: it was because of the pun. The pun was someday
Speaker 1: our prints will come Wow, which you know, even at nine,
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, that's that's a hell of a reference.
Speaker 1: And I had never even heard Dirty Mine or anything
Speaker 1: about it, but it made an impression on me, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I started getting obsessed with leave reviews only Wow,
Speaker 1: could you, at least during that time period, could you
Speaker 1: tell me what the modus operandi was in terms of
Speaker 1: how records were assigned to writers to review them, how
Speaker 1: long they had to sit with it, who assigns the stars,
Speaker 1: those things.
Speaker 3: That I did not know a lot about. There was
Speaker 3: some mystery to it. I know that there were people
Speaker 3: that had DIBs on upcoming records, there were regular reviewers
Speaker 3: that would have DIBs on it, and features too, like
Speaker 3: Bob Dylan. But when I first started, John Landau was
Speaker 3: still the music editor, and John Landau would make a
Speaker 3: lot of these decisions, and John Landau was a huge
Speaker 3: force at Rolling Stone. When I was doing that on
Speaker 3: my brother's story, they said, you need to talk to
Speaker 3: the king because the King knows Phil Walden and Capricorn Records,
Speaker 3: and the King will just help you a little bit,
Speaker 3: knowing how the ropes go. And I was like, who's
Speaker 3: the king? They're like, John Landau, that's the king. The
Speaker 3: Duke is Dave Marsh. And I'm like, okay, a right, okay,
Speaker 3: so the King is Landel, the Duke is Dave Marsh.
Speaker 3: So the king is just like, here's the call the king,
Speaker 3: here's his phone number.
Speaker 1: So you weren't a you weren't a staff writer. You
Speaker 1: were still freelancing.
Speaker 3: I was freelancing, and I was coming into the feature division.
Speaker 3: But John Landau even had you know, like even even
Speaker 3: had to say in some of the features and everything.
Speaker 3: So it was almost like it was somewhere between a
Speaker 3: hazing and an education. Because I called Landau and he
Speaker 3: was like, this is the king, Like okay, what do
Speaker 3: you what do you? How does this work? And he
Speaker 3: was like, well, you know, you got to dig deep
Speaker 3: and you gotta do this, and you got to do that.
Speaker 3: You got to know that, like southern music is born
Speaker 3: and like this and otis Redding, and so that's what
Speaker 3: you're waiting into. And Dwayne Almond, you know Dwayne, Dwayne
Speaker 3: worked with Blah blah blah, and so he was he
Speaker 3: was amazing and uh, you know this is pre Bruce
Speaker 3: and stuff. So he was the King. So he's still
Speaker 3: the King. I think Bruce probably calls him John, but
Speaker 3: you know, maybe he calls him the king. I just
Speaker 3: think Klubby. And to answer your question is like John
Speaker 3: Landau protected the club that was the music reviews got it.
Speaker 1: So I'm leaving this up to the old guards. Disdain
Speaker 1: for led Zeppelin. Yeah, clearly you were a fan of
Speaker 1: these guys, definitely, And of course I guess their hesitancy
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, they're still in the blues
Speaker 1: from black artists and reserving it and washing it down and.
Speaker 2: There's no integrity behind that.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, do you believe in the theory
Speaker 1: that fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I think I mean, does take still matter?
Speaker 3: Of course they can be wrong. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: it's such a fluid thing. Everything changes. Like as you
Speaker 3: were talking about led Zeppelin, I wish it ran as
Speaker 3: deep as you know, misappropriation and all that stuff that
Speaker 3: all came later. The big thing that they were against
Speaker 3: led Zeppelin for, I think was that they came out
Speaker 3: of a fad which was supergroups. Blind Faith was a supergroup.
Speaker 3: You know, it had Clapton and Stevie Winwood and stuff
Speaker 3: that had some integrity, but I think there was some cheesy,
Speaker 3: superficial supergroups, so called supergroups, that were around, and then
Speaker 3: here comes led Zeppelin, which is the guy from the
Speaker 3: Yardbirds and the other guys weren't that well known, but
Speaker 3: it was perceived as a supergroup and not taking that seriously.
Speaker 3: I think it was the fans that said, no, this
Speaker 3: is a real group. This is a real, real group.
Speaker 3: By the time led Zeppelin two came out, it was
Speaker 3: you didn't hear that anymore. It's a strange thing that
Speaker 3: I remember at the time. And then it became about
Speaker 3: you know, the Lemon song and all that stuff, and
Speaker 3: like stealing a little bit and that they came after it,
Speaker 3: but mostly they just didn't take them seriously. At the beginning,
Speaker 3: it was felt like a commercial venture by somebody who
Speaker 3: had done you know, more legit work elsewhere, like with
Speaker 3: the Yardbirds. So you know, it's that caddy really and.
Speaker 2: So we're supergroup seen as cheating if you will.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, yeah, totally totally, like too easy. It's like
Speaker 3: this is not born, you know, out of out of passion,
Speaker 3: heart and soul. This is born out of a Petri
Speaker 3: dish for success.
Speaker 1: Man, Come on, well, If that's the case, then did
Speaker 1: they take Band of Gypsies seriously?
Speaker 2: Kind of not?
Speaker 1: Is that why the Band of Gypsy's album really isn't
Speaker 1: considered in the Hendrix canon of.
Speaker 3: Kind of is now but at the time less than
Speaker 3: now for sure. For sure, it's like, oh, well, you
Speaker 3: missed the white hot cannonball. That's over now. It's like
Speaker 3: he's gonna go play jazz with Buddy Miles and this
Speaker 3: is not going to go anywhere. Great. It was kind
Speaker 3: of live of it. Wow, I know, but it's like
Speaker 3: all of that stuff changes, people reinvent and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's just fun to watch it all happen. But
Speaker 3: when there were that many people focused on one of
Speaker 3: the few music outlets out there, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of serious you're in, you're out of the club
Speaker 3: stuff going on. They don't have a lot of power.
Speaker 3: Cream even had a lot of power. I love that
Speaker 3: you had a subscription to Cream. Cream was fun. Cream
Speaker 3: took fun into the sphere of music journalism much more
Speaker 3: than Rolling Stone. Doesn't get enough credit. Lisa Robinson was
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, el Agonza and making fun and
Speaker 3: you know, she was all, He's running around with these
Speaker 3: pink little notebooks that she got from the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Speaker 3: She would only take notes on this pink Beverly Hills
Speaker 3: Hotel notebook. And she was friends with all of these guys.
Speaker 3: I remember she would, you know, George Harrison would show
Speaker 3: up at a led Zeppelin show and she'd be like, honey,
Speaker 3: can you believe Look? Can we just dish? And she
Speaker 3: was amazing. She kind of brought fun into it, but
Speaker 3: it was all kind of getting a candy store for
Speaker 3: me because the byelines were coming to life all around
Speaker 3: me and it was the coolest, Like you, I mean,
Speaker 3: I was studying the byelines. I love those byelines?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Was Lester Bangs the epicenter of critical writing for music?
Speaker 1: Because I also believe there's writers that write for each
Speaker 1: other as well. Yeah, you know there's certain Pitchfork writers
Speaker 1: now that when they're going to roast an album, it's
Speaker 1: almost like, hey, I'll check what I'm about to do
Speaker 1: and they'll just and I could tell it's just almost
Speaker 1: like their version of the Aristocrats for community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally totally, but it is is. He was a
Speaker 3: court jester, Okay. He was kind of the guy. Lester
Speaker 3: was a little bit more of a heckler. Then he
Speaker 3: became more he became more of an oracle, but he
Speaker 3: was kind of the heckler he'd gotten fired from Rolling Stone.
Speaker 3: He was a big character. And then the offshoot of
Speaker 3: Lester was Richard Meltzer, who was not as talented and
Speaker 3: kind of more of a legitimate pretender to the crown.
Speaker 1: Did he truly love music or did he love the
Speaker 1: art of the takedown, the art of the snark.
Speaker 3: Lester legitimately cared about the music. And I know this
Speaker 3: because I read the unpublished stuff that he wrote on
Speaker 3: the back of record company bios and sent to my
Speaker 3: little underground newsp The Door, and much more. Never had
Speaker 3: any assignments. He just had written for The Door a
Speaker 3: little bit and wrote so much that he would just
Speaker 3: send them reviews and they didn't know what to do
Speaker 3: with it. They just put it in this green file cabinet.
Speaker 3: And when I first had a meeting at The Door,
Speaker 3: I was like Lester Banks. I love Lester Banks. He
Speaker 3: wrote for you guys, because the cartoonist guy who has
Speaker 3: looked like an R. Crumb comic, I remember, oh my god,
Speaker 3: he won't stop writing for us. He keeps sending all
Speaker 3: this stuff and it's like, we can't it's long, we
Speaker 3: can't publish it. It's over in that green file cabinet.
Speaker 2: And I was like, so you own his original writings.
Speaker 3: I didn't take them foolishly. I bet they got thrown
Speaker 3: away because I don't think they were even fully read.
Speaker 3: But Amir, you would get like, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't have a bioish thing around here, but like it
Speaker 3: was coffee stained and beer stained, and it was single
Speaker 3: draft like xxx. He would just do like backspace on
Speaker 3: the typewriter and it say XXXXX. You could see what
Speaker 3: he didn't want us to publish. Yeah, it was beautiful writing,
Speaker 3: and I don't know what happened to it, but it
Speaker 3: was this idea that like there's a guy in Birmingham, Michigan,
Speaker 3: kind of expelled from California and the rolling Stone culture,
Speaker 3: but he's like a vesuvious out there like writing about music,
Speaker 3: because he couldn't not write about music.
Speaker 2: What was his outlet?
Speaker 1: If there's not substack, cream, the cream would just take everything.
Speaker 3: I think he wrote for the Village Voice too. He
Speaker 3: wrote the thing about Elvis at the Village Voice dying.
Speaker 3: That was amazing, so there he had outlets were starting
Speaker 3: to come up, maybe trouser press and stuff, but Lester's
Speaker 3: main thing was cream and a lot of his great
Speaker 3: stuff was in cream. But a lot of his great
Speaker 3: stuff is nowhere now sadly. And that was a real
Speaker 3: lesson to me. That's like, you don't have to write
Speaker 3: to be published. You can actually write to write, which
Speaker 3: I tried to emulate doing this book The un cool
Speaker 3: that was like that was for me. That was my
Speaker 3: version of beer stained writing on the back of a bio.
Speaker 3: It was just stuff for me, just because I loved
Speaker 3: writing and I was I felt kind of after the
Speaker 3: almost famous musical, I was like, God, I wasn't directing,
Speaker 3: I wasn't writing in my first language. Like I got
Speaker 3: to go back to that thing that I love, which
Speaker 3: was you know, this stuff, yellow legal tablet stuff, and
Speaker 3: that was the lesser vibe to me. Super Analog. Then
Speaker 3: they invented the display writer, and they also did the
Speaker 3: IBM Selectric, which you could automatically backspace on, which is
Speaker 3: really good. But then the display writer, John Hughes, got
Speaker 3: a display writer and he was working in the building
Speaker 3: where I was working, and so I saw like what
Speaker 3: he wrote on right, which was like, you know, the
Speaker 3: the NASA. To me, that looked like the NASA stage
Speaker 3: at you know, right Houston. He fucking doesn't write. He
Speaker 3: like beams in a script from somewhere. I don't know,
Speaker 3: as they're all beat up typewriter work. Though you could tell.
Speaker 2: What was your first musical memory.
Speaker 3: It was my mom taken us to see Bob Dylan
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty four, my sister and me in a
Speaker 3: gymnasium in Riverside, California. And there was a long time
Speaker 3: before we were ever going to concerts, or that I
Speaker 3: was ever allowed to go to a concert. But that
Speaker 3: was a protest movement thing for her. It was like,
Speaker 3: there's a protest singer. I'm going to take you to
Speaker 3: him because Republic they're going to burn down everything, and
Speaker 3: we liked the protest singers. That was her thing. The
Speaker 3: other thing was Elvis. I wont tickets two things I'm
Speaker 3: going to over answer your question. I figured I would
Speaker 3: win concert tickets and the thrill of victory would cause
Speaker 3: my parents to let me go to the shows. So
Speaker 3: I won. I had a trick way of winning be
Speaker 3: the third caller type contests on the radio, so I
Speaker 3: won those, Yeah, they were real, But I had two phones.
Speaker 3: I would work it. I'd be on the phone already
Speaker 3: dialing them, and then i'd have another phone all but one,
Speaker 3: you know, visit pressed. It would be like they got
Speaker 3: would be like you're the first caller, and I'd be like,
Speaker 3: you're the second caller, You're the third callar, and I'm
Speaker 3: like hey, And I'd win these tickets, and I want
Speaker 3: tickets to go see the Buffalo Springfield and Iron Butterfly
Speaker 3: at the Coachella at what is now the Coachella Festival Fairgrounds.
Speaker 3: It was actually the Indio Date Festival Fairgrounds, where nothing
Speaker 3: ever happened except once a year there was a you know,
Speaker 3: like a fair But anyway, I want tickets. I went
Speaker 3: to see the Iron Butterfly they were headlining and Buffalo
Speaker 3: Springfield that was opening up. And Buffalo Springfield were terrible
Speaker 3: because they'd already broken up. Neil Young and Steven Still's
Speaker 3: were not the band. It was the drummer and four
Speaker 3: other guys that hadn't even rehearsed. It was terrible, but
Speaker 3: Iron Butterfly were coming on next and I was standing
Speaker 3: by the soundboard. The guy at the soundboard who playing
Speaker 3: like the walk in or pre pre performance music puts
Speaker 3: on in a Gotta Davida before Iron Butterfly comes on,
Speaker 3: And this is my first taste of like a rock manager.
Speaker 3: Some guy comes screaming down the aisle and comes to
Speaker 3: the guys like, take that fucking thing off. You think
Speaker 3: they're gonna come on and they're gonna they're gonna duplicate
Speaker 3: that on stage. That's never gonna happen. Take that fucking
Speaker 3: thing off, you.
Speaker 2: Idiot, and it'd be like, didn't even know, just.
Speaker 3: Got fucking tripped off. And then they came on and
Speaker 3: they were really great. I thought they were great Iron Butterfly.
Speaker 1: Sonically speaking, did you really get a satisfaction when you're
Speaker 1: going to these concerts?
Speaker 2: Like when you're seeing Zeppelin in seventy three? Does it
Speaker 2: sound like a.
Speaker 1: Sports stadium sound where it's like the worst speakers ever?
Speaker 1: And like James Brown when when I watched these nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven shows or whatever, it sounds like he's singing
Speaker 1: from a megaphone, almost like Yeah, have you ever witnessed
Speaker 1: a concert in the sixties and the seventies from the nosebleed?
Speaker 1: Did the sound reach up there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Not?
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of it was born in like gymnasiums
Speaker 3: with no sound systems and a few amps and stuff,
Speaker 3: so like concerts, they were really tinny and didn't actually
Speaker 3: feel They felt like souvenirs more than performances like you
Speaker 3: get to breathe the air of Bobby Sherman or even
Speaker 3: the Jackson Five at the Forum. I mean that record
Speaker 3: sounds much better than they founded live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was gonna say, like even when watching
Speaker 1: the Jackson's before him in the seventies and I'm like,
Speaker 1: wait with Ronnie and Johnny as their band and Tito
Speaker 1: and Jermaine, it sounds when I listen to live records
Speaker 1: like it sounds so sonically fool like. Another example is
Speaker 1: James Brown live at the Apollo one, two and three
Speaker 1: on record, It's like wow, but somehow get the feeling
Speaker 1: that in concert they're not using like maybe the first
Speaker 1: twelve rods can really feel it.
Speaker 3: And then I saw James Brown in the middle seventies
Speaker 3: and it was not that as the Apollo records.
Speaker 2: It was not.
Speaker 3: It was basically a tiny fan, you know, like a
Speaker 3: half gift.
Speaker 1: So sound is coming from like the actual guitar amp, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and not from the house speakers.
Speaker 3: No, not that I remember.
Speaker 1: Drums are coming live from the stage and not from absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's the answer to that. And you know what,
Speaker 3: because there weren't a million concerts in San Diego, you're
Speaker 3: good with that. You're breathing the same air. It's like
Speaker 3: you're in the room with James Brown or BB King
Speaker 3: or Fleetwood Mac, you know, like the one of the
Speaker 3: early Fleetwood Macs, and it just incrementally got better. So
Speaker 3: you mentioned Zeppelin. Yeah, Zeppelin improved the sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, what was the what was
Speaker 1: the first paradigm shift of concerts in which like it's like, whoa,
Speaker 1: it's loud in here.
Speaker 2: And I think I've seen an article or two about
Speaker 2: them being so.
Speaker 1: Loud that it caused a riot or something.
Speaker 2: I barely remember it, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was one of my first concerts too, The Who,
Speaker 3: and I got nosebleed seats and like wandered down close
Speaker 3: to the floor from the bleachers, and then the lights
Speaker 3: came down when the Who were coming on, and I
Speaker 3: raced onto the floor and got sucked into like what
Speaker 3: would be twelve row type distance from the band. But yes,
Speaker 3: the volume was immediately so loud, and they had those
Speaker 3: marshal stacks and stuff that everybody, you're right, that sound
Speaker 3: was a call to like recklessness and abandon and I
Speaker 3: got sucked into being almost pressed against the barrier when
Speaker 3: the Who came on, and I thought I was gonna
Speaker 3: get stampeded. I couldn't breathe, and it was there like
Speaker 3: six feet away looking up and it was amazing. And
Speaker 3: then I got pulled down and like spit out to
Speaker 3: the side. But for like I can't explain, they were
Speaker 3: right in front of me and Keith Moon and just
Speaker 3: like I'll never forget it. It was Townsend in a silver
Speaker 3: jumpsuit and he had a crown on his head and
Speaker 3: he said, what a pleasure it is to be here
Speaker 3: playing in your trash can, because the San Diego Sports
Speaker 3: Arena is like a trash can, you know, so like
Speaker 3: so he knows where he is right ripping on our arena,
Speaker 3: and they're fucking amazing. And that was when I felt like, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is beyond sitting in a gymnasium and listening to
Speaker 3: like a tinny stereo.
Speaker 1: Great question, do you miss the danger element of rock
Speaker 1: and roll or what it's supposed to represent?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the sound was a call to violence. The sound
Speaker 3: was a cault that said, you're with us, it's us,
Speaker 3: it's us now, it's just us now. And that was like, fuck, yeah,
Speaker 3: that that feeling. I haven't felt felt it in Seattle
Speaker 3: when everything was firing with Pearl Jam and I didn't
Speaker 3: see Nirvana ever live, but like Alison Chains and some
Speaker 3: of those bands like that had that feeling which had
Speaker 3: disappeared in La. So being in Seattle, I was really
Speaker 3: excited about it, but that I haven't seen it a well,
Speaker 3: like I saw the Stones on the last tour. It
Speaker 3: was super loud and it sounded really great, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't a call to It was a call to luxury
Speaker 3: really because it was the you know, the big stadium
Speaker 3: and the sound was great, and you know, it was
Speaker 3: a lifestyle experience and so but it was way different.
Speaker 1: So I have a general theory, especially with music, that
Speaker 1: often when something arrives in hindsight, it's really the end
Speaker 1: of the sentence. I would imagine that for those that
Speaker 1: had the Woodstock experience, that that was an arrival of
Speaker 1: our generation, our voices, and it turned out to be
Speaker 1: the end of it. Some could say the mass success
Speaker 1: of Saturday Night Fever was all right, this is the
Speaker 1: truth flag planning, arrival of Disco, and it wound up
Speaker 1: being the end of it. Right now, I probably am
Speaker 1: the only human being on earth that might have Thriller regrets.
Speaker 1: You know, at the time, it seemed like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is the rival of Michael Jackson. All the exciting
Speaker 1: things that my eleven year old self got to witness
Speaker 1: during that time period. But now I could probably name
Speaker 1: forty things that Thriller has caused, including the end of
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, that would make me if asked, did Thriller
Speaker 1: do more harm than good?
Speaker 2: I might have some notes for you.
Speaker 3: That's Elton John's theory the Thriller.
Speaker 1: Ki At the end of the day, if there's one
Speaker 1: thing I can say about Thriller when we talked about
Speaker 1: Off the Wall, it was quality. Yes, how great this
Speaker 1: record sounds. Now there's a new Q word, quantity. How
Speaker 1: many words did it do? How much money he made,
Speaker 1: how many records he broke? That's right, And when you
Speaker 1: start chasing that dragon, there's no place to go but leave,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Because a lot of times the person who establishes who
Speaker 3: finds that kind of success that they sought for a
Speaker 3: long time, freezes at that moment. And that's why the
Speaker 3: album after, which usually is huge because of the album
Speaker 3: that came before, and it's not the album for so
Speaker 3: they get a claim on the album that is not
Speaker 3: as good. Michael was able to fucking really top off
Speaker 3: the wall. Yeah. Many artists would just do like a fucking.
Speaker 2: A record of a record or what do you call it,
Speaker 2: departure album?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then and it would be huge,
Speaker 3: but it wouldn't be their best. So that was an
Speaker 3: interesting thing that happened. And yes it did. It brought
Speaker 3: a lot of rain. This is the best thing, I mean,
Speaker 3: to have a conversation like, this is the best. That's
Speaker 3: the fan experience that you care enough to do it
Speaker 3: to have it.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you, at the time when Runge
Speaker 1: is really planning its flag and making itself known and
Speaker 1: you know, all the groups, like everything that's happening in Seattle,
Speaker 1: did you at the time feel like, okay, like integrities,
Speaker 1: integrities back in rock and.
Speaker 2: Roll and now we're here only to realize that.
Speaker 1: Oh not only it wound up being the end of
Speaker 1: rock and roll.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, that's.
Speaker 3: A really valid theory when it gets to a certain size
Speaker 3: thriller size, or Vogue calls because they're going to do
Speaker 3: a grunge cover and stuff. That's you know, that's the end.
Speaker 3: You know that the end, And I think very few
Speaker 3: people are able to step back seeing that coming. I
Speaker 3: really admire Harry Styles because Harry Styles reached a certain
Speaker 3: point and then pulled back. You know, you don't hear
Speaker 3: about him so much, right mart He didn't over do
Speaker 3: the brew. You know, it was like he was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna step back and try and keep it contained
Speaker 3: to a certain degree. I think. So I admire that,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't happen very often. And yeah, it floats
Speaker 3: up into this like high end of the mainstream where
Speaker 3: everybody is a carnivore kind of for that thing, and
Speaker 3: then it's it's terrible. Worse than terrible, it's over. It's
Speaker 3: exactly what you're saying. But it felt like an integrity
Speaker 3: flag had been planted for sure in Seattle at that time.
Speaker 1: So what were your real time thoughts of the eighties,
Speaker 1: You know, what was it like to hear Neil Young's
Speaker 1: trans record. Were you breathing a sigh of relief when
Speaker 1: Infidels came out after the Christian period, did you feel
Speaker 1: like a a stranger in a lost lane?
Speaker 3: And I was excited. I remember when when Don Kirshner's
Speaker 3: Rock Concert came out and a lot of bands were
Speaker 3: on that you could see bands playing. That was the
Speaker 3: beginning of MTV. Was really exciting because that's like one
Speaker 3: or eighty two, something like that, maybe eighty three, So
Speaker 3: that defines the eighties and it was really all of
Speaker 3: a sudden you couldn't just be Tom Petty making those
Speaker 3: great records. You had to have like that incredible don't
Speaker 3: come around here, no more video, So you needed to
Speaker 3: add another superpower. And that was interesting to see who
Speaker 3: failed and who made it, And I mean it's a
Speaker 3: point to be debated, like who was able to survive
Speaker 3: and who wasn't and how Craven was the MTV thing.
Speaker 3: But for a long time I loved having that kind
Speaker 3: of access. Then of course the hair bands kind of
Speaker 3: started to take over, and that seemed really cheesy in
Speaker 3: La To and that kind of spun me up to Seattle,
Speaker 3: where I loved hearing like the radio station up there
Speaker 3: that would combine like all kinds of genres and everything
Speaker 3: and yes, I did love Infidels. That Pivot was really
Speaker 3: sweet and a great album cover. But I didn't hate
Speaker 3: the eighties until the eighties started to hate itself, and
Speaker 3: then I was kind of ready to move on. I mean,
Speaker 3: I liked Peter Gabriel, and I thought he used the
Speaker 3: Forum really well. He was a great visual artist too,
Speaker 3: you could say David Byrne maybe too.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Gabriel, of course, you know, it's impossible to
Speaker 1: you know, hear the Sow record or In Your Eyes
Speaker 1: without thinking of say anything. But is it true that
Speaker 1: initially you guys were using a Fishbone song in place of.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, I think it was in the boneyard, was
Speaker 3: like what he was playing when we yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's wearing the shirt he's wearing a Fishbone shirt in
Speaker 3: the movie. Yeah and yeah. But when you look at
Speaker 3: that in the editing room, it truly does look like
Speaker 3: he's you know, stalking and heckling her with you know,
Speaker 3: and she doesn't look too entranced by it all either.
Speaker 3: With the wrong music, it looks like she's just annoyed.
Speaker 3: But In Your Eyes was the only song where you
Speaker 3: got like all the texture. And then it was a
Speaker 3: quest to get you know that song, which was not easy.
Speaker 2: So you had him play it live from that boombox.
Speaker 3: He's playing Bonen in the boneyard when we film.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you would have just done it and
Speaker 1: post and added the song later, but.
Speaker 3: We we did add the song later, but he's actually
Speaker 3: we used music for music live and I always have
Speaker 3: music playing in the takes and stuff that I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, Cusack really loved Fishbone and I believed that
Speaker 3: maybe that worked. That's who he was, that's wh who
Speaker 3: he is, but it really didn't. But Gabriel did. And
Speaker 3: the problem was he didn't want to give anybody that song,
Speaker 3: so they were really oh man, there was a whole
Speaker 3: thing about He didn't even want to take the phone
Speaker 3: call and so he got talked to having a phone
Speaker 3: call with me by David Geffen. And then when I
Speaker 3: talked to him, they said, you're going to get a
Speaker 3: phone call, like you're going to call him in Germany
Speaker 3: at such and such an hour early in the morning,
Speaker 3: and he's going to talk to you. And so I
Speaker 3: talked to him and he in this really small voice,
Speaker 3: he told me the song was too personal, couldn't let
Speaker 3: us have it? And we'd send him a video, you know,
Speaker 3: VHS to the movie, and I asked Tevi ray Vaughan
Speaker 3: to score say anything too. I was really on a
Speaker 3: quest to get really good music in there. But Gabriel
Speaker 3: said no.
Speaker 2: How did you bend him?
Speaker 3: Well, I was putting the phone down, and I was
Speaker 3: so heartbroken that I went fully junior high and I
Speaker 3: pulled the phone back up, not even knowing if he'd
Speaker 3: be on the phone still. And I just said, but
Speaker 3: why and and he said, well, you know, I just
Speaker 3: didn't think it worked when he took the overdose. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, took the overdose. He goes, this isn't the
Speaker 3: John Belushi movie. And I go, oh, my god, no no,
Speaker 3: and he goes, oh, this is the teenage movie. And
Speaker 3: I go yeah, and he goes, I haven't watched that yet.
Speaker 3: You're envisioning the John Belushi movie within your eyes playing
Speaker 3: when he od's he too? For like thirty years, I've
Speaker 3: been haven't have.
Speaker 1: Been weird, But okay, I'm dealing with a So I
Speaker 1: got my first major rejection like a week ago, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how to take it. Like I'm taking
Speaker 1: it so personal, man, because this is a denial from
Speaker 1: a hero and.
Speaker 3: It hurts, It hurts, It hurts, may not.
Speaker 1: Be a dude on the real You and I are
Speaker 1: really a podcast, but maybe we should discuss that in
Speaker 1: the future, like do our conversations like Frost and Nixon
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 3: We both have to be Frost right right, we Frost.
Speaker 1: And Frost right in closing, And I know this is
Speaker 1: a tired question, but I'll ask your five non box set,
Speaker 1: non greatest hits, non live, five albums that you stand
Speaker 1: by as just definitive master works. I'm not even giving
Speaker 1: you the Desert Island disc or this is all you
Speaker 1: can listen to the rest of your life for house
Speaker 1: is on Fire and this is all you can save.
Speaker 2: Five records?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna give you four, and then the fifth
Speaker 3: one is fluid. I would say, what's going on? Marvin, Joni, Mitchell, Hejira,
Speaker 3: Beach Boys, Pet Sounds, who Live It Leads and no
Speaker 3: Live but oyeah, okay, no live, no life, Okay, fuck, Okay.
Speaker 2: I'll let that go. It's a it's a great album.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks for that. This week. Like I told you
Speaker 3: when I saw you, I'm on such a tom Bell
Speaker 3: Spinners thing. I would say, the first Spinner's album right now,
Speaker 3: really yeah, I just love that record with only Don't
Speaker 3: let the Green Grass Fool You is not a perfect
Speaker 3: song on that album, so it's not totally perfect, but
Speaker 3: it's really speaking to me now.
Speaker 2: And that's the one you choose as the redheaded stepchild.
Speaker 3: Red headed Stepchild, which always leaves you know that that
Speaker 3: chair gets occupied by many.
Speaker 2: It gets played so much though like I wouldn't, I.
Speaker 3: Would all hangs together.
Speaker 2: I love it, I got it, okay.
Speaker 3: I can't get you out of my mind. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm owned. It's I have it. It's like I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's the happy sad thing.
Speaker 2: For what's going on.
Speaker 1: Do you see that as a total, a complete work
Speaker 1: from start to finish. Like for me, though, Side one
Speaker 1: is song one, absolutely holy holy side song too, and
Speaker 1: I consider that a four song record. I'm with you,
Speaker 1: and so for me there's side one the same with
Speaker 1: slies Fresh. I consider that all of side one just
Speaker 1: one song. And so but really, Hijeira more than hissing
Speaker 1: of the summer lawns.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. His era is a journey. His era takes
Speaker 3: you on the ride. That was Prince's favorite. Jony album too.
Speaker 2: He put me on a hissing of the summer.
Speaker 3: The summer LUNs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, But for you, like, what is
Speaker 1: it about Hijira that speaks to you?
Speaker 3: I like the story behind it. I like how the
Speaker 3: package suits the music. I like that it was she
Speaker 3: blew off a tour, took a journey on her own,
Speaker 3: and wrote those songs mostly those songs on that journey,
Speaker 3: and I just I love the whole adventure of it,
Speaker 3: and it's and it's present in the music.
Speaker 1: So the backstory really does mean something like without the
Speaker 1: backstory of Nebraska, would you feel the.
Speaker 2: Same way about it?
Speaker 1: Or even a vonni Ver's album of him nursing a
Speaker 1: broken Heart with chicken Soup in Northern Exposure box setting.
Speaker 3: Come on, I love that. I love the whole story.
Speaker 3: That's why kind of went out and did all these interviews,
Speaker 3: I think is to like, what's the story behind the story?
Speaker 2: I love it, got it.
Speaker 3: That's why you, you know, put those reviews on your wall.
Speaker 2: It's like got it, liked.
Speaker 3: Having it there. The process of taking it and putting
Speaker 3: it on your wall, it's like all part of the
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 1: I will wait till the Joni pick comes out to
Speaker 1: nerd out on you some more humble that someone that
Speaker 1: I admire and respects so much much, from your writing
Speaker 1: as a journalist to your film.
Speaker 2: Work and just your love of music.
Speaker 1: Like you are one of my north stars in terms
Speaker 1: of having it both, like I love creating music, but
Speaker 1: I love absorbing it more and telling about it. And
Speaker 1: I really owe that to you, And I thank you
Speaker 1: for everything, and.
Speaker 3: I can say so much of that right back to you,
Speaker 3: and I will thank you so much, Thank you soon.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is hosted by me Amir Quest Love Thompson.
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me.
Speaker 1: Produced by Britney Benjamin and Jake Payne. Produced for iHeart
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Speaker 1: Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Brown,
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