I don't read a lot of rock magazines for the most part.
I've interviewed everyone from Joe Strummer to Iggy Pop.
I've been meaning to write about the Rolling Stones, but I am the furthest thing from a hipster rock journalist.
I never do releases to try and make or break some contemporary band.
The only thing I use the Rolling Stone for is toilet paper when I run out.
You had to read what I wrote if you lived in L.A. in 1975 and cared about pop music.
Rock bands were never newsworthy. In the '60s and '70s, rock bands weren't in the newspapers because they weren't considered mainstream; they wouldn't sell papers.
I don't even want my music on mainstream radio. They don't deserve it. They destroy careers.
I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, “My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let’s pretend they aren’t because we don’t want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we’re saying.
Who are critics? Do they know about music? Have they proved themselves in the field? I remember, when we came up with the music of 'Dil Chahta Hai,' some of the critics said that the songs sounded like jingles.
Hip-hop is limiting itself and that also goes for editorially. Magazines and websites are the gatekeepers of what people think hip-hop is, but they actually end up limiting what hip-hop can be.
I've covered so much Tom Waits. He's one of my favorite writers. I have a real affinity to how he writes.
I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.
One of my great frustrations for 35 years at the paper was the fact I couldn't play a record for the reader when I was writing about an artist. How can you describe the beauty of Emmylou Harris' voice without hearing it, the sensual lilt of a Duane Allman guitar solo without actually hearing it, or the growl of Johnny Rotten without hearing it?
The stuff I write I'm very proud of, but I'm smart enough to know I'll never get on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' next to Elvis Costello.
We got our first significant pieces of press in the 'New York Rocker' from early gigs at CBGB.
Here's what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.
In the '60s, I used to love rock magazines; I'd cut out pictures of Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
We're real people and we're a band that's been playing on the scene for a long time. We've made a lot of friends, and one enemy we've always had was the NME. They've always basically slated us and they've basically never ever written about the music.
I came over here and worked for rock magazines, and I worked for Rolling Stone, which has a very high standard of journalism, a very good research department.
The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.
I'm a huge music fan. I usually say that if I had been born with a musical inclination, it would've been great. The Beatles changed everything for me, and I wanted to be a journalist for 'Rolling Stone.' I'm a big music fan in a Cameron Crowe way, kind of in a spectator way.
In 1962, I wrote a series about 42nd Street called 'Welcome to Lostville.' One result was that the young Bob Dylan read it and invited me to his first concert at Town Hall; the result was a kind of friendship that years later led to my liner notes for 'Blood on the Tracks.'
When I started Rolling Stone in November 1967, the magazine's initial chapter was to cover rock & roll music with intelligence and respect. Even then, we knew that the fervor sweeping our generation encompassed more than just music.
When I first started, in 2006, it was an exciting time. Independent, cool, weird artists were being successful, and magazines were writing about them, and people were getting played on radio that were, like, really good.
