Interviews

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Our very own the_lex interviews Mary J Blige in the Guardian today. It's a really interesting, excellent interview I thought, better than the Ciara one even: Lex they should give you more interviews to do! (Alexis P did an interview with Los Campesinos! in the same section which basically seemed to be an extended - and quite knowing - demonstration of what a dick Mr Campesinos is: anyway Lex's is better.)

I find even the prospect of interviewing anybody an absolute HORROR so I am very admiring of anyone who can do it reasonably well (and Lex does it very well). I am less forgiving of reviews cos I think I'm good at them, but obviously they're easier to do, you don't have to try and shape a story in real time.

Do any of you lot have any memorable interviews (read as well as conducted!) What do you enjoy in an interview with an pop star?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I kind of hate interviews too: the ones I like doing are either like this, where it's, like, a massive fucking honour to even be in The Presence of a legend; or when I interviewed Simian Mobile Disco for Plan B a while ago, and I didn't really care about them and for all its sins Plan B will run stuff which doesn't necessarily toe the writing line, so I was just irreverent and rude. I mean, I'd love to interview bands I hate, but no one prints hatchet jobs :( If I ever go totally freelance I guess interviews will be my livelihood though. The trouble is I rarely think pop stars will ever have anything really interesting to say. And if they do, they're probably not going to be a great pop star.

I was kind of impressed they kept in my ranting about indie in my Hot Chip review! Though they did take out the bit where I called the R1 head of music a "conservative dullard" :(

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My favourite interviews ever are the Paul Morley ones collected in the book Ask (which I think I've lost sadly) - it's out of print but it's probably the best thing Morley's ever done - the angles he takes and the things he gets out of interviewees are fascinating. Of course it - and vaguely similar sparring-partner style iviews like Tom Hibbert's "Who The Hell Does [X] Think He Is?" series in Q (best thing in Q ever, in a narrow field) are from the 80s, which seems to have been a time before media training and PR intervention.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how good I am at the actual interview - it's weird because I'll never know, because people don't sit in on you doing them! But I always ask far too much about the music and forget to ask about the person, and I'm rubbish at those leftfield surprise qns which can set the artist at ease, or make them think beyond their media training - though I did remember to ask MJB one question I learnt from Sophie H, "if you could write a letter to any person - alive or dead - who would it be and what would you say?"

(MJB's answer was Marvin Gaye, and she'd ask him how an artist who was so great be so afraid at the same time. Couldn't really corral it into the piece though.)

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Something I like to do with bands (not that I've interviewed anyone very big) is get one of them to be the interviewer for a moment and ask the rest of the band questions. Assuming they go for it, they loosen up and you get some interesting questions!

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, totally agree that smaller press can be brilliant for letting you say what you want. I don't know why magazines like Empire even bother with an interview; they may as well run the syndicated questions from the press release.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Really funny actually... when I got into work this morning, older colleague in Legal was going on about how annoying he finds it when US stars "find god". I didn't realise that it was your interview he'd read!!!!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha. All US stars are God-botherers! It's cool though, a lot of the time it's in a mental and slightly amusing way, like when they go on and on about how humble and blessed they are and how they are so thankful to God for ALL THEIR TALENTS and BEAUTY and they can't believe how fortunate they are to be such an AMAZING PERSON!

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Good Hot Chip review by the way, although I disagree with you about the ballads. That's maybe because I prefer understated fragility in ballads to sweeping melodrama but generally speaking the weaker a voice is, the more I like the ballad.

Disclaimer - haven't actually heard this record but some of my favourites on the last album were the ballads.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I didn't like any of the ballads on the last album. I like fragile ballads too but it doesn't really have anything to do with how weak the voice is - eg Mariah's 'We Belong Together' is totally fragile, without being wimpy or weedy because she can actually sing.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

I haven't interviewed many musicians, but Jamie Foxx was hilarious - so over-the-top in a way that you wouldn't believe if you saw it on film; it'd seem like an act. Sadly, this was then very difficult to convey in text - he used a lot of gestures and noises that weren't words. But the piece wasn't focused on him anyway; I was interviewing him, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sam Mendes and Peter Saarsgaaaaaaaard for a film they did called Jarhead.

My favourite interview was probably Peep Show writers just before Christmas, but that's partly because I'm a massive Peep Show fan than that I think I managed to get anything massively scintillating out of them.

The interviews that are the most fun to do, imho, are normally British men over 40 (Richard Griffiths, Bill Nighy, Anthony Stewart Head, Jim Broadbent) as they have a solid career behind them and aren't worried about pissing anyone off, so they're quite straightforward and have something to say for themselves.

The worst are young actresses for some reason, who are frequently dull - I don't know why the girls more so than the boys, but wonder if this is also true of pop music? Maybe not, because to a certain extent you need to project your own personality, or aspects thereof, in pop, whereas with acting a) you're given a character and b) the characters written for young women in film are frequently cardboard anyway, sadly.

Memorable reads: er... Morrissey in the NME, for all the wrong reasons?

/lengthy ramble

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

omg you interviewed jake gyllenhaal! I would not be able to interview him, or at least not without my questions being "er can you unbutton your shirt a bit more? take it off?" I think he is my last remaining proper sleb crush.

I guess girls have a lot more to lose, in terms of their public persona, than boys - and also they can lose support a lot more easily. boys can goof off and say dumb things and be forgiven but girls probably couldn't.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly, and I prefer this interpretation to the alternative (girls are hired for their looks, not their personality, which sadly may also be a part of it in the 18 - 28 Hollywood bracket). But it's true; the Scarletts and Keiras of this world are alarmingly readily slagged off for saying something slightly out of step - I think possibly because of this idea that young women are meant to be "role models", which is not something you hear so much about young men.

Gyllenhaal is possibly even MOARE beautiful in the flesh, although in a kind of you-could-totally-mistake-him-for-a-student-at-Columbia-or-somewhere way. He was wearing an unflattering blue fleece though, possibly in a cunning plan to deter demented hacks from just, like, licking him all over. I'd have felt a lot more nervous if I hadn't been so heavily jet-lagged.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

top sleb evah: MR JAMES BROWN*
most fun: MARK KING of LEVEL 42
most pleased with piece: YELLO


*a phoner -- i was petrified (i have mild phonephobia anyway); best line: "I am in going to be talking to the GODFATHER OF SOUL, from my OWN BEDROOM. I tidied it."

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i really like interviews -- they're a challenge, the challenge being "ask a question x has never been asked before, get him/her out of professional zone into goods engaged discussion zone -- there is NO SUCH THING AS A STUPID PERSON, find how this is proved true when talking to eg the dopes out of THE FIXX" <--- tough one

wayne shorter loved it whern i told him at as an Official Punk Rocker of course i disapproved of Weather Report -- not a dope AT ALL but over-interviewed by the reverential

the most "technically difficult" was george benson, which i was pointed at at very short notice, when -- to be frank -- i had never heard a NOTE of his music, and only read about a page worth of facts about him

great question, for free (since i am unlikely to be doing many interviews any more): "what's the first music you remember hearing?"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

ooh ooh that is a good one, I shall remember it. it's that "take X out of their comfort zone" which I am not v good at! sophie h is very good at it, she can ask random questions about bears or portuguese and get away with it.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

1st interview: Darren from 808 State. Only for student paper but I was v excited and made a big deal out of it - apart from not bothering to write anything down after realising the tape recorder wouldn't work. Somehow I managed to remember 90% of the conversation.

I gained a lot of confidence interviewing people while at university - the most famous being Peter Shilton and Craig Charles which is a quite rubbish of course but still fun to meet them. The ones that got away: Rolf Harris and Coolio.

Am often envious of people like The Nipper and Anna F when they get to talk to people I like/am interested in...but too many other aspects of music journalism put me off.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

The ones that got away: Rolf Harris and Coolio.

Sentence Of The Week.

[andthatisthat.livejournal.com]

1st interview: Darren Hayes. He was very nice and put me at ease. He also stroked my knee. Was followed in quick succession by interview with Rachel Stevens, who was also lovely but incredibly hard to get an entertaining answer out of.

Favourite interviews:
Kelly Clarkson, because she could not have been sweeter or friendlier, and just seemed really excited that anyone in the UK cared who she was (this was a month or so before 'Since U Been Gone' came out).
The Feeling, because I talked to them about great hairdos in pop.
Hilary Duff, because I got her to make pictures with fuzzy felt while I was talking to her, and took pictures at various intervals.
Girls Aloud, because Kimberley always remembered me and asked how I'd been since she last saw me.

Most terrifying interviews:
Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys (not together), because those were the only two where I was interviewing someone I'd near-worshipped as a child.
Will Young, because I was working for TOTP Online at the time and it was rumoured that he hated us, and also because the first thing he did was tell me how boring and inane the woman who'd just interviewed him had been. (Luckily my interview went fairly well, as far as I can remember.)

Worst interview:
Brian McFadden. What a cunt.

In terms of what I enjoy, I really like interviews that throw the promotion of the latest single out of the window and just get people to be spontaneously funny. The interview with Girls Aloud (the problem page one where they had to give people no-good advice) from the first Popjustice Magazine will stay with me forever. Or any interviews with people who are well aware of their own sense of ridiculousness and don't mind having it pointed out (eg Christina Milian on Popworld, gamely insisting that when she rolled around in oil for her video, it was "art".)

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

My best interview was with KT Tunstall, just as she was about to become MEGA. She was lovely... our 15 minutes timeslot turned into an hour and a half chat about life, the universe and everything. It's still online here (http://www.glasswerk.co.uk/index2.php?db=national&page=news,article&id=625).

My worst ever interview was with glam twats King Adora in 2002. The interview was conducted on their tourbus, where I had to compete with the Playstation for their attention, and where the singer spent the entire duration of the interview slagging off just about everyone else in the music industry. By the end of the interview, I just wanted to punch him. Bizarrely, I really liked their music, even after that experience.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Replying to myself to try and recall others I've done... er... Hard Fi were ok, not as twatty as I'd been expecting. They'd received their platinum disc for 'Stars of CCTV' that morning. None of them really spoke except Richard Archer though. Felix Da Housecat phoner which went out live on student radio was quite scary. Biggest disappointment was my editor at the student paper interviewing Charlotte Hatherley when Ash were in town. She thought the interview would be with Tim Wheeler, who she had a crush on. But it wasn't, and I wasn't able to tell Charlotte how much of a crush I had on her as a result. Probably for the best I guess!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I've never interviewed anyone famous!

Oh, apart from him out of Napalm Death, for that metal thing. He was very interesting!

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I used to love doing interviews - this was back in my comic-'journalist' days. I think I was very good at them. I remember going to a San Diego convention in 1990, I think it was, wanting to grab some interviews but having no idea who would be there and willing => no chance to research anything. One of the people I grabbed was Archie Goodwin, a veteran comics writer. He said at the end that people had been interviewing him for almost thirty years, and mine was the most interesting he had ever done, with lots of questions like none he'd ever been asked before. I think I was good at it because I have a good memory and a quick mind and I'm pretty articulate, and because I think I had a real understanding of and interest in the craft of making comics.

The other interview that week I particularly remember was with Scott McCloud, whose Understanding Comics had gained a good deal of mainstream coverage. The first few minutes were clearly him feeling out whether I was someone who knew anything about comics or not. I passed by knowing who Jack Kirby was, the Art Spiegelman, and then when he mentioned Osamu Tezuka and I said I'd written an obituary for him, I was in and he was fine.

Oh, also Sergio Aragones, a brilliant Mexican-American cartoonist. This was in what the con termed "artists' alley" - where pro artists would sell sketches. In the same time it took some hack next to me to draw a sketch of Batman's head, Sergio was being hugely charming and witty while I interviewed him, and at the same time he drew his barbarian Groo fighting a dragon while a crowd of people watched, coloured it in and added loads of gags in word balloons.

haha also in today's Graun Film&Music

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

is ZOMG dubdobdee-Gale_DesL pop-mashup:
http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2249911,00.html

Coming in late but wanted to say I really liked this too

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Good job Lex!

[koganbot]

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves, or, How I Slugged It Out With Lou Reed and Stayed Awake" by Lester Bangs (Creem, March 1975) is probably the standard.

I'm terrified of interviews so almost never do them. Best interview I ever conducted was of my girlfriend Leslie in '87 on the subject of Tiffany. I self-published it. The most attention an interview of mine ever got was Shonen Knife for the Voice, which then almost didn't publish it. I thought it was mediocre for a Frank Kogan piece (though since then my standards have gotten considerably lower for that category, so if I were to take the time to reread it I might well think it's excellent), but an unknown-to-me-at-the-time Mark Sinker apparently was quite taken by it.

I like being interviewed, though, and the one Scott Woods did with me in '97 was astonishingly good, if I say so myself.

If you count email interviews (and I don't know why you shouldn't), I'm really proud of the one I did last year with Nicole Atkins for Paper Thin Walls; my questions were from left field and she had a blast with them.

Also, Dave's email interview with Brie Larson for Stylus was terrific. It helps that she's a terrific writer and thinker herself.