Writers, Journos and Scribes: Tell Your Most Cringe-worth Interview anecdotes

He turns to me with a look of pure disgust and says, "If you keep thanking me, I'm not going to do it."

He was nice, if a little gruff. But Robin Zander was the nicest guy ever.

I won't name names because, frankly, you've never heard of her anyway.

she was an easy interview, elaborating on my questions for me, which was great since i was totally starstruck on top of being unprepared. but like two-minutes in, my recorder stopped working. mid-interview i stretched from the phone i was using to the one with the attached recorder to fix it whilst keeping the facade of conversation, but she totally picked up on it. i must have sounded panicked, cuz she said to me "hey, you gotta calm down." with every ounce of blood was in my face at this point, i asked if we could reschedule due to technical difficulties. no problem, she said, how's two-days later. great, no problem.

with new batteries and confident that the recorder was working fine, take two occurred as scheduled. once again she totally took my direct from the press kit questions and ran with them to places i never could have taken the interview. twenty minutes or so later, i hang up. go to the tape recorder and rewind to listen to my charlie-rose-like triumph, and the thing stops like two seconds later. huh? i didn't even bother to check it during the phone call and the fucking thing stopped like a minute into the conversation. tears welled up in my eyes.

the subsequent article sucked and was padded with a nearly full page photo of the subject. dream of music journalism deferred.

I think we can also safely include:
Getting utterly drunk and falling asleep on the Raveonettes tourbus and having to stay there all night because none of them could wake me (though someone put me in a bunk, which was sweet)

Telling Pete Tong a joke only to have him go utterly, utterly silent. "That was a joke," I said. "Yes," he said, finally. "I just didn't understand it."

Orbital swearing blind they didn't know Higher States Of Consciousness and making me sing it. I sat there going "doo doo duludle-du doo doo" for well over a minute, getting progressively more squeaky, before they cracked up laughing.

There are many more. I am capable and get jobs done etc, but I frequently manage to make a tit of myself.

xxpst

In college i went on a press junket for The Ladies Man, starring Tim Meadows and co-starring Mr. Colt 45 himself, Billy Dee Williams. The way these junkets work for those who were not unfortunate enough to attend them: 9 college students gather around a table, star sits down and gets grilled with the most banal questions imaginable for 30 minutes. Repeat.

I was sitting next to this preppie guy from some midwest college, and he whispers to me, "I'm so nervous. I've never met a real celebrity before." I told him just to see them as regular people who have to do things in their dayjob that they don't like... like going to college junkets.

So Billie Dee sits down and is grilled by usual idiotic questions by this cabal of future video store employees. It's this kids turn to ask a question, and he stutters out: "So... you w-worked with Berry Gordy on Lady Sings The Blues... Was that hard knowing all that you know about Berry Gordy?"

Billie Die looks at him with a stare. Says nothing. The kid is fucking shivering next to me. Calmly, Billie Dee says, "Berry Gordy is a good friend of mine. What are you saying?"

"You know, p-people just say things about Berry Gordy"
"Like what?"
"He just, I don't know, has a reputation or something. I don't know"
"Berry Gordy is a good friend of mine."

Kid stares at his hands for the rest of the interview. If he was smart he would have said, "Because he's a meglomanaical asshole who cheated some of America's greatest songwriters out of millions and milliosn of dollars of songwriting royalties," but nothing at a junket ever proved to me anything about college kids beyond "you all have no future"

he takes me to task
in increasingly bitter
answers...then, "sorry"

I have learned the hard way to always type out my notes immediately after an interview. If I wait a few days, I often can't read my own chickenscratch and lose some entire sentence because I just can't remember what one word was.

only to find out
that nobody cared at all
(or already knew)

and yeah, el cholo diet, anxious to bother judd about the mark brazil email fiasco..haha

biggest technical fuck up was when I was interviewing Gangstarr, the phone fucked up and I could hear them but they couldn't hear me, and eventually they were like "HELLO........GET YOUR FUCKING IRISH ASS BACK ON THE PHONE DUDE, HELLO? WHERE ARE YOU AT" and stuff.

I started the piece "Get your fucking Irish ass on the phone", I think that's the only time I ever broke the don't mention anything about what the interview was like for you rule, ie no crappy I spoke to an artist anecdotes. Or at least if it isn't a rule, it's usually my rule.

Also Dizzee Rascal, I asked some really long winded question which I thought was a good one, forget what it was about and he sighed and just said "what? nahh man. i don't even know what you're talking about". practically shrivelled up at the other end of the phone.

I interviewed Manda and Stephen from Bis at the Nasty offices once. It was actually a successful interview; then, when I turned my tape recorder off, they asked me about the savage dis of one of their 7"s in my zine (which I did not write). My face turned red, but they actually weren't too upset.

"How the fuck are people going to read my book?"

Still shamed....

Better yet, I brought a girl that I was sweet on at the time, and she thought I was a total idiot for not being prepared. Actually, now I feel even dumber for bringing someone along.

Oh, and another time I was supposed to do a phoner with Al DiMeola, but I only had a 30 minute break from my student job, so I ran home - and of course he was late, and didn't call until I was back at work. I could've taken the afternoon off of course. So stupid. But it was cool having a message from Al DiMeola on my answering machine (or back then, I thought it was cool).

I was a fucking dumbass in college.

xpost

1. Charlie Haden, circa 1997 or whenever he put out that album of duos with Pat Metheny. The guy was so calm and friendly and happy, it was like talking to a Buddhist monk.

2. Henry Rollins, around the same time (promoting Come In And Burn). We did the interview thing for 45 minutes, then I turned off the tape and we spent another hour just talking about jazz like two dorks.

3. Tony Iommi, for the tour program for Ozzfest in 2000 or 2001. We didn't talk for long, but TONY IOMMI CALLED ME AT MY FUCKING HOUSE!

-- tylerw (tywil...), June 2nd, 2005.

I think mine might actually run, which is bizarre, the next issue of Warrior, but perhaps we should put our pieces together to assemble a more accurate picture of the reclusive genius that is Mr. Mccombs.

That is intensely cool, and I would tell everyone I knew as well.

Ian MacKaye called my house and spoke to my Mom several years ago. I'd called Dischord to see if I could interview him. Weeks later, the man himself called back....only I wasn't home. My mother said he was very polite and soft-spoken.

Similarly, Martin Atkins called my house to follow up on an issue we'd discussed during an interview. He too got to speak with my Mom.

They claimed no, but judging by the way the rest of the interview went, I've a feeling I touched a nerve, or something

That transcribing journalist lady sounds like what those in the psychiatry business call "a complete cunt".

So a weird beginning, but it was a great interview. And on the answering machine, it said, "Katy and I aren't in right now . . ." so I asked him if he's living with THE Katy (of Katy's Song) and he said yes. I also asked him for his favourite albums of the year (it was near the end of the year) and you could hear him going through his collection trying to figure it out, which was kinda cool.

Shame on you.

One was with Mark Lanegan, shortly after Whiskey For The Holy Ghost came out. I had a time booked to call Lanegan at home, and there was no answer. So it was rescheduled. The second time he answered, but I woke him up. Let's just say he wasn't happy about that.
I started asking him a number of prepared questions, many of which revolved around his lyrics. He played the "I don't talk about my lyrics" card, and after that, his answers became more and more terse, to the point where I started getting yes/no. After about fifteen minutes, he said time's up. I'm pretty sure he hung up before I could wrap it up.

The second one was with Gary Louris from the Jayhawks. I had a time booked, called him, and he said he didn't have an interview scheduled for that time. I asked if we could do it anyways, and he said "Fuck no! I have a fucking life, etc."
Turns out I was given the wrong time. The call was rescheduled, and he knew I was the little prick that called him and tried to interview him on his downtime. So we start off, and he's pretty reserved.
But we start talking about Golden Smog and his peers, and I learn about Wilco from him. That they had just entered the studio to record their debut. I get excited and start asking him questions about Wilco and he explodes "I'M ON THE FUCKING PHONE TO TALK ABOUT MY BAND!"
Hey, I was 23 at the time.

What a colossal dick.

LEt me say that again -- interviewed twin brothers. Over the phone.

I tried my best to get them to constantly identify themselves as they talked, but after a while i just took to guessing.

I don't mind interviewing a whole band in person - I just throw a question into the air, who ever answers it answers it, and after a few minutes only one or two people are doing all the talking anyway. I just don't like when you get the drummer and only the drummer on the phone interview (even worse, a drummer who's only been in the band a couple of months) (unless he's a drummer who co-writes all the songs, like the Simple Plan guy) and you're resisting just asking him questions about the singer. And eventually you do anyway.

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/review/229

I know from experience and hear from others that his sense of humour isn't especially well developed. (Or at all)

And, yes, I am getting on in years--I was in college when I tracked down Mr. Chilton, it was in 1981.

Back when Live were called Public Affection, from York, PA, and passing out their shitty demo to local newspapers, I interviewed their lead singer, at the time called Zed. Why was his name Zed? Because when he picked up the phone he always said "it'ZED. A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless it's a talking horse, of course. Have you ever heard of a talking horse??? Talking to Mr. Zed!!!

Actually, I made it embarrassing to him. Not me. Everyone in editorial who saw the story laughed. Like anyone gave a shit about rock musicians. It was your civic duty to mess with them.

I'm pretty sure I interviewed Killing Joke before any of the nationals did 'though; so surely that must be a worth a couple of brownie points?

I don't even understand this.

Another time, I covered "a blooz festival" and the key quote was furnished by the headliner, Sonny Rhodes, I think. "Not too many drunks!" Once it ran, the owners of the picnic ground it was held at declined to lease to any more local concerts for awhile.

Ned, it's in my boxes of newspaper clippings back before we did things on home PC and made digital copies of it all. I threatened Chuck with the plan to put my most annoying stuff from newspaper days into a book through iUniverse. He said he'd like a copy and I'm sure it would sell at least half a dozen.

For the paper I came up with the idea of doing a weekly feature called "Nightclubbing," "clubbing" used in the literal sense, not the Iggy Pop sense. And it became a popular weekend comedy piece for the non-rabid fan audience, who could read and laugh at musos, promoters, venues, etc., getting punched out in print over morning coffee. Generated much mail, telephone calls, threats, petitions and readership. No lawsuits.

Another amusing one concerned the band Circus of Power, a group
doing their idea of Manhattan dirtbag biker rock. Songtitles like "She's My Junkie Girl," etc. Really tedious and not in a good bunch of feeble but determined lamers kind of way. The promotion and mealymouthed bragging that accompanied them wherever they went
seemed to always come with crap about how they were with Hell's Angels MC or such apocrypha. So when they came to town, I reviewed the record and show, which blew, and mentioned something along the lines that they were Hell's Angels trying to turnover a rusty old Harley that was never gonna start. And the next week their management sent in a letter threatening legal action, apparently because if you are identified as a member of some outlaw motorcycle gang and you aren't actually a member, and real members see that, then they come around looking to stomp you, or something to that effect.

Hey, sign me up. And Circus of Power were deeply pathetic morons so I am glad to see that you treated them as such.

A full three record contract PLUS promotional radio EP of SUCK. They received the benefit of the full label investment. I knew their lawyer. He sucked, too, but knew the corporate entertainment thing well.

I recall a Rock Hotel gig when the singer spent the entire show demonstrating he was a graduate from the Danzig Magnet School for The Shaking the Leather-Gloved Mighty Fist at the Crowd for the duration of the show.

I invited them up to the radio station to do a station ID and short interview. Ben said "sure thing, but let's keep it kind of short, maybe 15 minutes, cuz we have to get dinner before the show."

then for some reason i had the input muted and nervously had to fuss with the computer for a minute, all the while feeling very bad about making them wait. so by the time i got things rolling i felt so bad for wasting their time that i kept it REALLY short. in fact they said "wow, that was nice and short!"

afterwards i looked at the counter and realized the interview was about 4 minutes long, and I felt REALLY REALLY silly.

real nice guys though.

blixa once talked down on me cos i was one of 'these' (meaning: filthy journalist pigs, of course)

Not a big deal in retrospect but to a Drag City-worshipping college freshman, it ruined my week.

I was also interviewEE once, and the whole interview was going well, everyone was drinking, having laughs, and I thought we came off pretty good. As we were leaving, the lady in the group - my wife - for some reason called me a 'retarded faggot' - two words she has never used before or since - in front of the interviewer. Naturally, this made the interview. We're the band that calls each other 'retarded faggots.'

The lesson: don't drink.

i just interviewed 50 mutek artists and despite not knowing anything about 90% of them beforehand i managed to fake the funk!! i felt like i was dodging bullets all over the place!

So long as you're not a member of Faxed Head I think you're okay.

When I arrived, extremely late and with my girlfriend in tow, the bassist was the only person still there. She was extremely friendly, gracious and (I suddenly realised)...the most beautiful woman I have ever met in my entire life.

Needless to say I died a faltering death over the course of what felt like hours. I never wrote the thing up. I have never listened back to the minidisc. I never will.

Grrr... Emma Bunton. Yum!

What were you expecting?