You’ve probably heard that Blender ceased publication last week; I’m sorry to see it go, and not just because I know a lot of people who worked there.

I wrote exactly one article for Blender: it was the cover story of their second issue, early enough in the game that Craig Marks wasn’t yet running the show and they hadn’t even started putting issue dates on the front of the magazine. It was an interview with Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, representing for the “50 Sexiest Artists of All Time” (far from the last time Blender would run a list like that). My marching orders were to spend about half the interview probing Stefani for her opinions on sexiness and the other half covering what was going on in her life and career. I did just that–and then observed with some amusement how the editing process systematically stripped out just about everything in the interview that wasn’t about the sexy.

I had met Stefani many times before: in 1996, I spent quite a bit of time on the road with Everclear and Bush–and in each case, No Doubt were the opening act. Stefani was a good sport through the whole interview, but she was obviously uncomfortable talking about sexuality, and visibly relaxed when we turned to other matters. She and Gavin Rossdale are married now, of course, and have two sons together. The song Stefani calls “Boys and Girls” was ultimately named “Hey Baby,” and hit #5 on the pop charts.

I’ve added the interview to the archives, restoring it to its original length (and removing some of the editorial tweaks)–if you want to know more about Stefani’s college major, her collaborations with Dr. Dre and Moby, or how she ended up with pink hair, then you can read about it here.

posted 1 April 2009 in Archives, Articles. 2 comments

Another excerpt from The Andy Warhol Diaries, this time about the first-place cabin during an airplane ride from Los Angeles to New York:

Tuesday, March 29, 1977
John Travolta from Welcome Back, Kotter walked by, sort of said hi to me, sat in front of me. Paddy Chayevsky told the stewardess he wanted to sleep during the trip, not to wake him up, but he woke up five minutes after the plane was in the air.

John Travolta kept going to the bathroom, coming out with his eyes bright red, drinking orange juice and liquor in a paper cup, and he put his head in a pillow and started crying. I saw him reading a script, too, so I thought he was acting. Really cute and sensitive-looking, very tall, comes off looking too fairy-ish, like too many people around now, but very good-looking. You can see the magic in him. I asked the stewardess why he was crying and she said “death in the family,” so I thought it was a mother or father, until I picked up the paper at home and found out that it was Diana Hyland who’d died of cancer at forty-one, soap-opera queen, his steady date.

Dropped Fred and Todd Brassner (cab $27). Cab fares had gone up.

posted 30 March 2009 in Excerpts. 1 comment

Another L.A. photo; this one’s the front of an apartment building that caught my eye.

posted 27 March 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

The Allman Brothers Band has three dates left at their annual Beacon Theater stand in New York City; this one, celebrating their fortieth anniversary, has attracted all-star guests such as Sheryl Crow and Eric Clapton. It seemed like an opportune moment to add my history of the Allman Brothers to the archives.

Settle in–it’s the longest article I’ve ever written. Rolling Stone assigned the story (a history of the band) at four thousand words. (If you don’t think in wordcount, a cover story at most magazines generally runs between three and five thousand words–these days, most publications tend towards the lower end of that spectrum.) After months of trailing the Allman Brothers, doing research, and interviewing them and their associates at length, I sat down to write the story. I’m a structure-oriented writer: my first step with any article is having a detailed outline, which not only helps me organize my thoughts, but makes sure I’m sticking to my assigned wordcount.

There are writers, including some excellent ones, who prefer to write an article at whatever length seems fruitful; then they (or their editors) can hack the piece into shape. That always seemed like needless work to me, but in this case, I could not figure out how to tell the whole sprawling multigenerational epic of the Allmans into four thousand words. I spent over a week trying to come up with an outline, and finally said, “Screw it, I’ll just write it as long as it needs to be.” That turned out to be eleven thousand words; after some trims, the magazine ran ten thousand words on a ten-page spread. Editors told me it was the longest music story they had printed in years.

This version adds a few details that RS cut, including Dickey Betts’ youthful experiences playing in a circus, Jaimoe’s memory of getting Otis Redding and Muhammad Ali to stand back-to-back, and the ill-fated experiment at the Watkins Glen Summer Jam of a skydiver who had a stick of dynamite. I’m also pleased that this version mentions Scott Freeman’s book Midnight Riders; I did extensive reading and research on the Allmans, but his history was an especially valuable resource, particularly with regards to the death of Duane and the legal troubles of Gregg. If my article just whets your appetite for the Allmans, you should pick up his book.

posted 25 March 2009 in Archives, Articles. 2 comments

Two years ago, I interviewed Millard Kaufman, then 90 years old, for Rolling Stone‘s “Hot Issue.” The category: Hot Debut Novelist.

I was very sorry to hear that Kaufman died on Saturday (at age 92); he was a gentleman and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him.

My short article on him and his fully lived life (a substantially truncated version of which ran in 2007):

The traditional advice for fledgling novelists is “write what you know.” But what if before you wrote your first novel, you had served in the Marine Corps, been nominated for two Academy Awards, co-created the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, and turned down the opportunity to star in a movie opposite sex goddess Sophia Loren?

Millard Kaufman, 90 years old, has done all those things. Which is probably why his debut novel, Bowl of Cherries, is a free-wheeling comedy that careens from a Colorado horse ranch to an Iraqi prison to a porn studio underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. “In movies, you have to find your subject and stick to it like grim death,” Kaufman says. “With a book, I like to go wild, just because I can.”

Kaufman spent his professional life as a screenwriter, dating back far enough that he routinely refers to movies as “pictures.” His most notable film was 1950’s Bad Day at Black Rock, where Spencer Tracy single-handedly faced down a hostile Western town. Bowl of Cherries is the work of a writer unshackled, finally able to use vocabulary and structure that would be verboten in Hollywood. Louts are “crapulous”; young men are “love-swacked”; breasts are “plangent.”

The novel is being published by McSweeney’s, the hip imprint that Kaufman had never heard of a year ago; Kaufman is getting more publicity than he ever has in his life. Sitting in the kitchen of his Los Angeles home, an untouched tuna-fish sandwich on the plate in front of him, he waves that off. “They didn’t give a goddamn about the book at first,” he says of the press attention. “It was because I was a freak, writing a novel at 90 years old. But I’m extremely limited. I’ve never been able to find anything I’d rather do than write, so what the hell choice do I have?”

Kaufman’s already working on his second novel. “I’m physically incapable of sitting around and doing nothing,” he says. “Despite my age, I can get into a lot of trouble.”

posted 18 March 2009 in Articles, News. no comments yet

Of all the songs likely to name-check the African country of Mozambique, I would have put Tom Cochrane’s catchy but lunkheaded 1991 hit “Life Is a Highway” fairly low on the list.

But last week I actually paid attention to the verses, for the first time ever, and there it is:

From Mozambique to those Memphis nights

I thought maybe Cochrane was a big fan of Dylan’s Desire album, but the following line is:

The Khyber Pass to Vancouver’s lights

Which demonstrates that Tom Cochrane owns an atlas, but didn’t bother to check whether highways connected any of these geographical locations.

posted 16 March 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Another photo from last week’s walk home.

posted 13 March 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

A few more excerpts from the Andy Warhol Diaries, these featuring Mick and Bianca Jagger:

Saturday, December 25, 1976:
Mick sat down next to Bob Colacello and put his arm around him and offered him a pick-me-up, and Bob said, “Why yes, I am rather tired,” and just as he was about to get it, Yoko and John Lennon walked in and Mick was so excited to see them that he ran over with the spoon that he was about to put under Bob’s nose and put it under John Lennon’s.

Thursday, February 17, 1977 (Los Angeles):
The big people, Sue Mengers and Ryan O’Neal, didn’t arrive, they told Bianca that they couldn’t “be seen at tacky places like Mr. Chow’s.” Bianca took us to On the Rox, owned by Lou Adler. When we got there it was Ringo Starr and Alice Cooper. I’m not saying they were the only celebrities there–they were the only people there, and they were in the john.

Sunday, February 20, 1977 (Los Angeles):
We got to the house and Bianca was there. She’d had a fight with Mick and he’d left that morning for New York–she’d accused him of an affair with Linda Ronstadt.

posted 11 March 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet

Since teenage superstar country singer Taylor Swift has basically taken over the world, with her sophomore album Fearless logging a full eleven weeks at #1, this seemed like an opportune moment to add my profile of her to the archives, written last year as I followed her from TRL to an upscale Chinese restaurant to a private plane to a gig in Greenville, South Carolina. Underneath the exterior shell of Swift’s unrelenting stage-managed professional warmth, I thought there was a genuinely good person. I was also impressed by her youthful songwriting prowess: I hope that as she gets older, she has a few bitter breakups and turns into Elvis Costello (without, you know, the beard), but I’m afraid the more likely career path is  Faith Hill.

posted 9 March 2009 in Archives, Articles. 4 comments

Walking in Los Angeles can feel solitary–there’s lots of people around, but they’re whizzing by you in cars. But I like it anyway, both for the exercise and because it’s a good opportunity to take some pictures. This one’s from last week:

posted 6 March 2009 in Photos. no comments yet