Because I Knew You Wanted to Know

Interviewing old rock dudes

Whenever some icon of the 60s or 70s or 80s is pushing some new project, I jump on the interview so that I can tell my grandchildren that in some way their old wrinkly grandma might know about  something they read about in their textbooks or iPads. My roster isn’t that long. I’ve talked to Bill Withers, Toots, John Fogerty and the other dudes from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Richard Hell, Cherie Currie of the Runaways, Dionne Warwick, Cyndi Lauper and most recently Robby Krieger of the Doors yesterday.

These people (well not so much the women) tend to breath heavy into the receiver. They always sound pitifully tired - usually because I’m just one in a long string of interviews they don’t want to do. Always begin by complimenting the project they’re promoting, ask one flattering question relevant to that, dig a little more into the era they’re known for and round it out with a question that I’ll never publish the answer for: what do you want to do next. Seems important to recognize that they aren’t just relics, that they’re living, breathing (heavily) beings of 2010.

Robbie Krieger fit right in with the others I’d interviewed. Just the way he said “Well…. hello,” I could see this might go horribly wrong. I asked if he was tired of talking about The Doors. He said it depended on the quality of the questions. Considering I was counting on him rambling on about the few questions I’d sketched out, I was worried. So I just went for broke and asked if he thought Jim Morrison was an annoying attention-hoarder. He said no actually, the other guys felt grateful that he loved so much attention. And you had to take the good with the whipping your junk out at shows bad.

I find I always get to a point where we’re getting along fine and I just want to make sure we end the interview on a good note, which isn’t a good quality of a journalist. My mentors (shoutout to Mike and Michael!) always told me to save the controversial questions to the end, that it was about the story, not making the interviewee feel good. I’m still trying to learn that lesson.

Bob Dylan is still my pipe dream interview. I managed to get Will Shortz once, the crossword editor at the New York Times. After that, my editor challenged me to find Jimmy Hoffa, but more realistically, Dylan. I’m still chasing that one. You’ll be the first to know.