Contra Morrissey, I am delighted to say that I am ecstatic to have a whole mess of writer friends who are kicking ass in various ways. You may know the name of Alan Schwarz from the New York Times, where he did extraordinary work on concussions in sports (especially football) and their aftereffects, which got […]
posted 29 August 2016 in News. no comments yet
Next week is the 31st anniversary of Live Aid–I’ve got something special planned for that day, but in anticipation of it, I’ve added my minute-by-minute breakdown of U2’s performance of “Bad” to the archives. Relive all 12 glorious minutes!
posted 6 July 2016 in Archives. no comments yet
I wrote an article for the New York Times about Jeff Jampol, who manages musicians including Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and Rick James–as I put it, “the performers that the music business calls legacy acts and that the general public refers to as dead people.” If you’re interested in that niche of the show-business ecosystem, […]
posted 24 June 2016 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet
The jury is still out (literally) on whether Led Zeppelin plagiarized elements of Spirit’s “Taurus” for “Stairway to Heaven,” and whether that Wayne’s World scene will have to be updated with a sign that says NO STAIRWAY AND/OR TAURUS. But that’s not the only time Plant and Page cheekily borrowed somebody else’s work–I wrote up […]
posted 23 June 2016 in Articles. no comments yet
Hey everybody! My next book is all about Bill Murray and his crazy, awesome life. It’s got hundreds of stories about him enlivening movie sets, golf courses, and kickball games–many of them never told before. The Tao of Bill Murray isn’t out until September 20, but I wanted to share this excellent cover art by […]
posted 16 May 2016 in Buy My Stuff. no comments yet
I was very sad to hear of the passing of the hugely talented comics creator Darwyn Cooke, struck down by cancer. Every page I ever saw that was drawn by him crackled with life and wit; he was also a gifted writer who had a knack for making complicated stories come alive in far fewer […]
posted 15 May 2016 in News. no comments yet
Because I had never recapped a TV show before, I tried it for The New York Times with the first season of Vinyl, HBO’s lavish reconstruction of the early-1970s music business. The series had a promising but flawed beginning (with a two-hour pilot directed by Martin Scorsese), then it gradually got worse, then it perked […]
posted 9 May 2016 in Outside. no comments yet
A few favorite artists I missed on seeing live when I was younger and probably won’t ever get to now: Talking Heads, Hüsker Dü, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. (Okay, that last one definitely isn’t happening, because he’s dead.) The Replacements would have been high on that wish list, except I caught the reunion tour at […]
What’s that? You say you’re curious about my recent work for the Rolling Stone website? Well, you better start clicking up a storm, because in the last couple of months, I wrote about Bill Murray’s awesome Christmas special, the Beatles’ most blatant swipes from other artists, the musicians and musical figures who died in 2015, […]
posted 2 February 2016 in Links. no comments yet
I discovered that my Woody Harrelson interview from 2009 had fallen victim to a website redesign at Maxim: but now it lives on in the archives here. Thrill to the advance word of Zoe Kravitz as a budding sex symbol!
posted 29 January 2016 in Archives. no comments yet
