What's the stupidest band interview you've ever done?

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Now that we've got an ever-increasing number of writers popping up here, I figure this could provide some entertainment. By 'stupidest band interview,' I mean that the band was stupid, or the occasion was ridiculous, or whatever -- something spectacularly dumb and uncomfortable that you had to do to pay the bills if you like. Change names if you need to (and even if you're not a writer, factor in stupid band encounters if you like).

For me, probably when I had to do a favor to a friend of mine who worked at Sony in 1994 and interview a band about to put out their debut album. They were based in Orange County, though, so there was a vague relevance. Still, I didn't think much of the album, and the guy I interviewed wasn't very forthcoming, though he did say he'd love to be headlining the big local ampitheatre one day.

His wish eventually came true. The guy I interviewed was the bassist from Korn.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 14 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Can't say I've gotten stuck with a STUPID interview, but the stupidest section was an interview I did with Tom Cochrane. He'd been in Red Rider, a band that was quite popular all across Canada, with a string of albums that were well-played on FM radio ("Lunatic Fringe" even made inroads into the States). As I interviewed him, however, he had just started on a series of hit singles that cracked the Top 40/pop charts. During the interview I asked him what it was like taking that success to the pop charts and playing in a slightly different arena than before. His voice took on this stung tone, and he immediately launched into this tirade about never selling out, and about how Red Rider were underground, and how they were, in fact, the ORIGINAL underground band, as if to deny that his new songs were, in fact, charting at or around #1 on the top 40 charts. Why anyone would want to deny their own popularity, I don't know, especially in a place like Canada where it's pretty hard to make it. It wasn't stupid, really...it was just...weird.

― Sean Carruthers, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Worst interview. There are many, worst being the one's that you didn't know had started until the tour manager comes in and tells you times up.
The Weirdest Interview - The Make-Up - Legendary TJ's Newport 97. I borrowed a suit for the occassion, didn't know much about them (cept the asscociations with Nation of Uylsses) but really nothing could have prepared me for it. I made sure that I interviewed them with my back to the wall so they wouldn't be distracted by anything in background, but I was the one distracted. The support band that came in and sat down behind them were highly distinctive people: none of them was over five foot, dressed as though they were on their way to kindergarten, pigtails and thick fringes, they looked exactly like kids, but were easily pushing thirty. Of course this was nothing to The Make-Up who hardly broke for breath all afternoon, but I couldn't keep my eyes off these 'kids', who were very much aware of my attention, and acted up accordingly: first bouncing together on the sofa, then pulling out toys and fighting over them, finally performing a dogfight using model aeroplanes, leaping from chair to chair. David Lynch couldn't have contrived a more surreal afternoon, cause when I got over them I started asking the Make-Up questions about their manifesto. (I had to flip the tape for the answer one question) Sure, I interrupted, but they were taking it in shifts (individually slipping off to the toilet) and dragging it back to their dogma. 4 Real? don't ask me, they hella freaked this limey out. Oh yeah.

― K-reg, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

never interviewed a band.

when i was about 13, a couple of us at school decided to start a fanzine. we sent a bunch of questions to kitchens of distinction. they replied too. we never got the fanzine off the ground. it was about as successful as our previous venture of selling pokes for computer games for 10p each

― gareth, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The most stupid interview I ever did was on myself! I already knew the answers before I could ask the questions!!!!

― Old Fart!!!!, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I interview Public Enemy back in 1989 for the local student paper and asked whether the Ricki Lee Jones record helped or harmed the love affair in question. Chuck D was not amused (or - so it transpired - in love).

― Pete, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, the only band I've ever helped interview was Man or Astro- man?...it went really well, I researched the questions and got some funny answers. My friend was going to broadcast it on the radio. But, after the show we found out that the tape had got wiped :(...so, the next time they came over we arranged to interview them again, but their management sort-of found out that we were no longer in anyway attached to student radio..."You've been rumbled" said the manager, and I think the band gave us an ironic wave as we slid away...I've not interviewed a band since. So ends my short-lived career as a music journalist.

― james e l, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was doing the monitor mixes for this lammo band who shall remain nameless at that smelly venue near centre point in London. The band had fux0red off, and me and the FOH guy got interviewed by this french journalist who thought we were the band! We tried to do it in character....I suppose that's pretty stupid, on a couple of levels.

x0x0

― norman fay, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I remember going through to Glasgow to do interviews with the bands on the Romo tour, whenever the hell that was. All I can remember is the singer from Plastic Fantastic nearly doing his hand in opening a bottle of beer without a bottle opener for me; Neil forgetting to turn the tape on for whichever band he was doing; Orlando being really nice; being too scared of Dexdexter to ask them anything coherent or hold the microphone close enough to pick anything up; trekking halfway across Glasgow to sleep on the floor of a council flat in Kelvinside and keeping Neil awake with my snoring. None of the interviews made it to air on our radio show. I think going for the whole Romo thing (there can only have been 30 people at the show) was the stupidest part.

― alex thomson, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What on earth is Romo ?

― Patrick, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If I remember correctly Romo was around 93 0r 94...it was a sort of New Wave of New Romantics...it was championed by the Melody Maker, and was basically a flop, a footnote in the history of music in the 1990's.

― james e l, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Romo = end of 1995. If Taylor Parkes reads this, he can comment, as he essentially helped bring it to attention with Simon Price.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sounds like one of those things that are begging to be summarily dismissed on the basis of name alone, like gabba and emo.

― Patrick, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If I remember right, it was, more or less. It did seem a good idea at the time, 1996 wasn't it? The year of (urgh) Knebworth.

― DG, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I could go on for hours about my idea of what Romo was and wasn't all about, but I can't be bothered - it was far more Simon Price's thing than mine, I just wanted to write about it was fun, and because contrary to popular belief, these bands were attracting 500 people to clubs in London and Brighton before we'd even noticed them. Six months beforehand, all these people had been mods or hip-hoppers or whatever, but they were into changing their image and had settled on a kind of low budget punk/mod version of New Romantic as the look for that winter (I can hear American readers of this forum gnashing their teeth from here). And the good groups didn't really sound like New Romantics anyway - Dexdexter were just as weird and trashy as possible, a real old-school art school band; Orlando were blue-eyed soul, for Christ's sake, and I still think they had incredible potential. The Romo stuff in Melody Maker was really Pricey's philosophy plus my sense of mischief. He wanted to piss off the growing consensus of rock classicism and make kids wear make up and be weird. I wanted to piss off the same rock snobs, and create a little space to write some really crazy shit. This is why I fell away when many of the bands did what all cocky young groups seem to do, and decide they were The Rolling Stones before they'd even released a single (the fact that they'd started doing what they were doing for fun, and maybe also to wind some people up, was forgotten). There were a lot of dodgy managers and general meddlers hanging around that scene, and I think a few of them might have foolishly encouraged their charges to play up the New Romantic thing when in the studio - certainly, very few records of consequence came out of the whole thing (2 or 3 *really* good singles, a couple of OK ones).

The stupidest interview I've ever done was probably a grey-afternoon ordeal in a travel tavern near Boreham Wood with The Seahorses (John Squire's band after The Stone Roses, for those with short memories). I had no particular love for the group, I just thought a few tracks on their LP were OK, and agreed to interview them out of curiosity. It was a familar tale when I got there: they didn't seem to want to do the interview, they didn't seem to like each other very much, half of them thought that being in a rock group involved being rude and ignorant to everyone as a matter of course, the other half were unbelievably dull and polite. In this situation, interviewers usually try their best to get something usable, get out early and spread the few quotes across the feature very thinly. That day I thought "oh fuck the bloody Seahorses" (I was soon to get bored with music journalism) and ploughed through two hours without backing down once, resorting to pedantry and bloody-mindedness wherever necessary. I seem to recall that the finished thing was at least 50% straight conversation, because when I looked back at my transcript of the interview tape, it read like Samuel Beckett. One of the silliest conversations I've ever had, and I can say this in all modesty, because I barely "wrote" a word of it - the final article is an epic of non-communication. Stupid as in low-intelligence: Crush, the short- lived duo formed by Donna Air and her co-star from "Byker Grove". Ask a simple question, get back two stares like goldfish on the moon, and an answer that makes you wonder what question you just asked.

― Taylor Parkes, Tuesday, 15 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Funnily enough, I felt exactly the same way when I read that Seahorses interview. But then they were obviously such boring people that I can't imagine it being any different.

You were a wise man to get out of it, Taylor.

― Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 16 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

nine years pass...

I remember going through to Glasgow to do interviews with the bands on the http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG tour, whenever the hell that was. All I can remember is the singer from Plastic Fantastic nearly doing his hand in opening a bottle of beer without a bottle opener for me; Neil forgetting to turn the tape on for whichever band he was doing; Orlando being really nice; being too scared of Dexdexter to ask them anything coherent or hold the microphone close enough to pick anything up; trekking halfway across Glasgow to sleep on the floor of a council flat in Kelvinside and keeping Neil awake with my snoring. None of the interviews made it to air on our radio show. I think going for the whole http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG thing (there can only have been 30 people at the show) was the stupidest part.
― alex thomson, Monday, May 14, 2001 8:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― kkvgz, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 17:54 (fifteen years ago)

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG

― markers, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 17:54 (fifteen years ago)

Eight-way tie for last: Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Ivan from Men Without Hats, the guy from Matt Bianco, Thrashing Doves, Huey Lewis, the Raunch Hands, Balaam & the Angel, La Toya Jackson. Yes--my days as an interviewer are a generation or three removed.

― clemenza, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:22 (fifteen years ago)

Why was Huey Lewis so bad?

― kkvgz, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:26 (fifteen years ago)

Not bad, just rock-star unintentionally funny. This was 1986, his heyday. His opening words, which became a long-running joke between me and my friends: "Let's wail, babe."

― clemenza, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:28 (fifteen years ago)

Balaam and the Angel! I'm...astounded, really.

"Let's wail, babe."

Uh.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:28 (fifteen years ago)

I don't know if it was the most stupid interview but dave navarro... what an asshole!

― Shin Oliva Suzuki, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:33 (fifteen years ago)

I know I'm going to regret asking but: what on earth compelled you to lolcatify that near-decade-old post, kkvgz?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:40 (fifteen years ago)

I am the worst possible type of douchebag and I cordially invite you to punch me until I die

― kkvgz, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:41 (fifteen years ago)

http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG

― kkvgz, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:42 (fifteen years ago)

(sorry, inane carryover from this thread)
restore 'rollin my damn eyes' plz u bastards

― kkvgz, Tuesday, 5 October 2010 18:43 (fifteen years ago)

seven years pass...

Writers: what’s the worst interview you’ve ever conducted. Mine was Mazzy Star—David Roback accused me of trying to psychoanalyze him so I hung up
— Larry Fitzmaurice (@lfitzmaurice) May 5, 2018

― mookieproof, Monday, 7 May 2018 00:48 (seven years ago)

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