A kung fu fighter in a disco

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" :(

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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."

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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!

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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?"

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I'm racking my brains but I don't think I've ever actually interviewed a band! That's astonishing...every time it's either been a solo artist or one dude out of the band. I don't think I'd like to interview a band, it'd be you vs them...

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also the kind of thing which makes for "good quotes" is precisely stepping over various lines - ie precisely the thing girls won't be forgiven for. looking at it another way, the boys probably wouldn't get away with the kind of girly-girly conversation about relationships or emotions which Mary J had with me - but it's the humour of boy-conversation which journalists like...

unflattering blue fleece problem could be solved by TAKING IT OFF!

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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.

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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.

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it'd be you vs them...
That's what I thought, but it's generally fun. I've only done a few: GoodBooks, who were ace, Envy & Other Sins, who were ace-r, Architecture in Helsinki, who were stoned, and The Cribs, of whom we do not speak. I wouldn't want to do it in the hotel room official type set up, but in a pub it's fine - the only problem is to make sure they're talking about what you want them to talk about; otherwise it's great because there's no issue with awkward silences and the whole thing is much more like a normal conversation because they all know each other. ALTHOUGH this could be because I've interviewed relatively small acts - hate to think what for e.g. Metallica would be like. Not that you'd get them all at once.

The write up is the tricky bit - too much material, and do you go with what was interesting, or try to represent each member fairly?

Who's been your favourite interview, Lex? The Blige is great - I didn't know much about what she's like, but reading it now feel I could've been there at the interview.

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I wonder if musicians are a slightly better proposition than film people for the comfort zone stuff? Or maybe I'm just not a great interviewer... but if you have a press officer in the corner and you ask something too odd, they can end the interview. A friend interviewed Kevin Spacey and asked who he would want to play him in the film of his life, and that was basically the end of the interview, wtf?

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the trouble with pub interviews is that you constantly worry about whether the dictaphone is picking everything up: the sterile hotel atmosphere takes care of that completely.

favourite interview in terms of actually conducting it - this one maybe; or Carina Round when I was at university; or Mathew Jonson, which I did over skype at 1am (he was in Tokyo). just great conversations, basically. favourite interview in terms of write-up - Simian Mobile Disco or Ciara or Clipse.

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yeah I've never had to deal with PR people sitting in (except in the Ciara interview, but she didn't say ANYTHING) - Mary J's husband sat in for the first 10 minutes in a sort of protective way, before wandering off. I've never been briefed on stuff which was out of bounds except for this one - Mary didn't want to talk about the steroids stuffz (which was OK because I didn't want to ask her about it either).

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Actually, depending on the format, talking to a whole band can produce the best interviews: if you're lucky you get to see their interaction, they'll contradict each other, take the piss out of each other, bitch. (although you also might just five sullen bastards sitting there). Telling who was speaking apart on the tape* afterwards can be a problem...
As you might be able to gather, I never had an interest in talking to musicians about music! To me, that was the least important part of the exercise.
MCarratala
[*or whatever technology today's children employ]

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to be honest i think actors are a dead loss even w/o the press officer in the corner -- the fact that they are prfoessional performers of roles not their own selves is kryptonite to the entire porpoise of an interview

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Yes, line-stepping is great, although I prefer - depending on the interviewee - when they make good jokes, which also works well as a pullquote. But then the scandal rags spoil it by taking jokes as 100% serious because it sounds like a better story e.g. Scarlett Johansson shagging that dude in the lift at an awards show, which was completely her deadpanning and then got splashed all over the place as gospel.

I hear that. The only blue JG need be sporting is the lapis lazuli of his mountain pool eyes, AM I RIGHT?

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TOTALLY RIGHT. and the only place suitable for the interview is IN MY BED.

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bands are hard work i think unless they are up for fun -- the butthole surfers gave lots of good texan-surreal copy, just telling tales from home, and topping each other's weird gags; if they give a united front agin you -- whether justly or in the case of lovely me always otherwise -- you can't win at the time, which leads to "getting yr own back" esprit d'escalier-wise <--- there was a LOT of this at nme back in the day, getting the interviewee to say something dumm then shafting them for it IN PRINT AFTERWARDS with snidiness you didn't dare (or think to) unleash in the moment

(one of the things i always respected abt swellsy is that he HAD THE FITE RIGHT THERE IN THE INTERVIEW ROOM)

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This is the annoying thing (at its worst in roundtable interviews) - if you're working for a publication which is actually interested in their work, and couldn't really give a flying one about their breakdown, relationship, drugs, haircut etc, PRs still generally assume you're trying to pull a fast one. And other hacks can ruin a roundtable by asking a proscribed question and losing the slot for all of you.

TOP TIP: If you're doing a roundtable type thing and you know the interviewee smokes, find out their brand and sit next to them with a packet: they will be yours for the entire slot.

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