Entertainment For Lively Minds
Best and worst rock interviews ever
Posted by Stephen Merrick on 31 August 2011 - 7:52pm.
Best:
Got to be John Lennon talking to Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone in 1970. If you haven't heard the recording of this yet, I highly recommend it. It's available as a podcast.
John is on fine form: complete unfiltered bile about the Beatles and the 60s and everything. And enough soundbites to fill a lifetime of biographies.
Worst:
I don't know when it was exactly, but sometime in the mid 90s Brett Anderson did an interview with the NME I think, where he went on about a magical beast called the Jacaranda or something. Not a good time for him. Classic rock star drug-induced wibble.
- More from Stephen Merrick.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Best interviews...
Any one conducted with Randy Newman.
Well......
....he was in Australia recently and gave this excellent interview for ABC.
There's a link saying mp3 download in the middle of the page. Simply right click and save target to...if you're using windows. Originally it was an hour but it's been slightly edited.
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/stories/s3282491.htm
Lester Bangs vs Lou Reed
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarfs"
It's in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Worth a read to put it mildly.
That is effin' brilliant...
Lester Bangs only had to think of Lou Reed and his writing would reach new levels of hilarity.
Wasn't that when...
... Bangs suggested that Reed should "Eat a bowl of fuck!"?
An insult that should be more widely used, by the way.
Bangs' elegant turn of phrase
In Psychotic Reactions, Bangs relates the encounter with Reed in such a colourful way. This bit made me chuckle. He interviewed Reed in his hotel room with a transexual and observes " ...it was almost unmistakably a guy. Except that behind its see thru blouse, it seemed to have tits. Or something. It was beyond light and shade. It was grotesque. Not only grotesque, it was abject, like something that might have grovelingly scampered in when Lou opened the door to get the milk and papers in the morning"
I was going to add
that after the scrolldown; top choice.
Not sure Fine form
is the way to describe the Wenner interview. It's the most bitter, mean spirited extended rant I've ever heard. Not a good word to say about anyone (apart from er indoors), slagging off everyone from Epstein to gentleman George Martin, and even poor old Neil Aspinall. Lennon at his smack addled worst. Compelling and fascinating stuff though.
it was published postumously
as Lennon Remembers. Unfortunately he was never the most reliable witness and in this state it's hard to take him seriously.
The Lou Reed/Lester Bangs though is great stuff. At one point, Lou states: "You really are an asshole Lester!"
That's rich indeed...
coming from Lou Reed!
Pedant alert...
...it was actually published originally as 'Lennon Remembers' in 1974 or thereabouts.
I agree, doesn't do himself any favours. But then he was a Beatle. We can't expect him to be normal and rational after all that.
Quite:
he couldn't even distinguish between his own songs and Paul's.
The John Lennon one
...sounds interesting. Unfortunately "it's available as a Podcast" is not that helpful. Since as far as I'm aware there is no Google search available for "Obscure unspecified Podcasts, and their likely contents."
To be fair...
I Googled "John Lennon Rolling Stone podcast", found it immediately, downloaded them and they're now on my iPod. Simples.
Laziness
on my part.
Mmmm
His Markness didn't break a sweat either. Much as I like him.
"Are you the new DJ?"
Mark E. Smith and Gavin Esler.
I remember one
I read with Paul Heaton (I think that's his name) of The Beautiful South in Q that made me chuckle. He talked about his band's game of coming up with pallendromes. (I think that's what they're called.) My favourite was "Van Morrison's son's Morris van".
Which would read back as
Navsirromsnossnosirromnav therefore not a palindrome. Abba is a palindrome, as is Madam I'm Adam.
the petshop man's brother was lying
.
I remember one
I read with Paul Heaton (I think that's his name) of The Beautiful South in Q that made me chuckle. He talked about his band's game of coming up with pallendromes. (I think that's what they're called.) My favourite was "Van Morrison's son's Morris van".
Trying hard not to suck up to our benefactors but
I'm still loving the Van Dyke Parks Word Podcast.
More soon please.
I remember a particularly good Michael Hutchence one.
It was in Q back in the day when he was still boffing Kylie. I think it was the interview when he said that going out with Kylie was great because she was so little and she made his "Old feller look HUGE!"
Eat your heart out
GBS!
Frank Zappa
Zappa gave a very good interview to Playboy in the early 90s after he had been diagnosed with cancer. It was memorable as it would have been one of the first times that a musician of that generation gave an interview about their life knowing that it would likely be one of their last. Zappa was characteristically unsentimental, and when asked if he considered the early Mothers time the good old days, he replied along the lines of "I consider them the old days, but we did have fun", which has always struck me as being a positive way on looking back at your youth.
For the worst interview, I would nominate something from the NME in the 80s, where an artist's politics were considered more important than their music. I remember Fish getting stitched up mainly because he didn't agree with Red Wedge. You didn't have to like Marillion to feel sympathy for him.
Best and Worst
I remember the Doctor from Doctor and the Medics consistently giving very amusing interviews. In Smash Hits, he said that when he felt down, he cheered himself up with the knowledge that somewhere there was a parallel universe where he was the King of Uruguay and Mick Jagger was a banana.
As for the worst, I think it was Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes on a Saturday morning kids show at the height of their fame. They were both lying lying down, wearing dark sunglasses, grumpily and grudgingly giving very brief answers to some hapless Zoe Ball-type interviewer. I realise that they may well have been hungover, but that's no excuse for rudeness.
The Brett Anderson 'Jacaranda' episode...
...wasn't part of an interview, but rather an answer to a questionnaire.
I suspect he wasn't taking it entirely seriously.
I recall Brett Anderson
being all grumpy and not joining in on the fun on some Saturday morning kids tv show. Boo hoo! Don't go on the show in the first place.
Wouldn't probably have had much of a choice there
Try and humiliate the most irretrievably pompous "Brit Pop" character you can find by making him do a kids show. They should do more of that kind of thing these days. With Bankers maybe. A new catch all solution for the overpaid and the underachieving. And generally those who have found a way to print money, regardless of any unique talent.
PIL
With those young Geordies trying ever so well to engineer another Grundy. Wobble does menace oh-so-well.
This is what you want
(this is what you get)
Wasn't the whole
farce set up by a few offensive remarks aimed at Lydon in a filmed preamble by your namesake, Mensi?
Unless you are the real Mensi. In which case it's all your fault.
Magnificent memory!
Indeed that was the case, with various Upstarts suggesting that Jimmy Pursey would be a far better Pistols frontman than Lydon!
Well
they did try and, thankfully failed!!
Morrissey, by Danny Kelly for the NME in 1985,
when an interview by Moz would usually cause a sales jump greater than any of their first-week record sales.
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/quotes/chairman.htm
This issue had a lovely text-free cover, but I can't find it anywhere on the web.
It was 7 June 1986.
Aside from the NME logo in light blue and the words "long live the king" under the logo, in very small type, it was quite brilliantly textless. My favourite NME cover ever. The cardigan looked effervescent in hazy black and white, with his eyes coloured in blue.
The interview ended with the leagendary "privates" gag.
Still have it framed.
Try here, comrade,
http://991.com/Buy/ProductInformation.aspx?StockNumber=419587&PrinterFri...
Sorry!!
We have our interviews/covers mixed up. The interview you refer to is 1985. But it was the "Halo" cover, with text.
Still great nonetheless.
Love Smash Hits "cat" cover also.