Advice for interviewing a frontman

brett's recipe for allowing the artist to sound exactly like a billion other ppl giving the "interview they feel they ought to give" is
the excuse EVERY hack writer gives for being his/her boring ("it's not MY fault, that's just what they said to me"

to be worth reading, an interview has to be an interaction between (at least) TWO interesting people

it's true that if someone hasn't been interviewed before they may not just go onto automatic - but "bands just about to be signed" are notorious for opting for the "kinds of things they feel ppl say in interviews"... you have to coax them away from this if they start it

it's all very well wanting to give props to a band you admire, but a journalist's first duty is to their readers - not the interviewee.

interviewing 101 ends.

Far more people are going to buy the lowliest of the low musician's album than they are going to read anything by any writer. The problem in this day and age of music criticism is that the writers think that they're as important or more so than the musicians they writer about.

thing is kate, the LAST thing you want is a catch-all formula of "qyestions that should be asked": you are after WHAT IS SPECIFIC and SPECIAL about these people, and that needs intuiting what questions, as asked by you, will spark them to be entertaining or insightful or scary or whatever

Seriously, back in the day, the writers on the ol' NME were more famous than the people they wrote about.

This happens less now, but there is still a measure of it.

Mark S to thread. Oh he is.

I'm not suggesting interview's should all sound like Access Hollywood.

still, whether or not you're actively putting yourself into the piece, what mark s says about "interaction" is OTM. a good interviewer, after all, is going to shape the piece by asking incisive questions and taking the conversation in the most interesting direction. and if they're a good writer, they can then colour in all the details of the conversation beautifully without once resorting to the dreaded first-person singular.

As I've said before, it bugs me when interviews or news stories say "Damon spoke to the NME and bought a drink" as opposed to "me" or "Justin Writer" or whoever.

while it is important to let the guy go on about himself, he'll only do it well with coaching. i tend to think any "frontman" that's know for running his/her mouth tends to have those interviewing themselves in the bath moments that helped make the music in The Commitments more bareable. do your research!, and open your head to find what the point might be to the reader. no interview is really about anything beyond producing something to read. so get a good list of questions together and go over them a million times, so you can throw them in and guide a conversation. write them out long, but find the key to anyquestion so you can throw out a short phrase of half question to keep things moving in a direction that get material worth its weight.

and hes not going to be your friend, so don't bother with it.

in the end you are writing a story: if it is a GOOD story it will be readable even if the reader never heard of the person being interviewed and doesn't buy records or even like music (ok this is an unattainable ideal ususally but not a bad one to aim at)

my rule of thumb for myself back when i did this regularly was that there should always be AT LEAST two reasons for the story to exist

i. promotion of subject of story and their record
ii. something independent of i. which reader can go away with and turn over in his/her mind (whether it be stylish or witty writing, or insight theoretical or psychological argt, or comical anecdote not dependent on who story is abt, or ANYTHING really, that makes the piece MORE than just one more bit of promo)

The subject himself, although possessed of an extreme self-confidence and swagger onstage, apparently gets very, very nervous and twitchy in interview, and has a disconcerting habit of stopping mid-sentence and shouting "NEXT QUESTION!" if he feels things aren't going too well. One of my sources says that I can get away with asking boring run of the mill questions, since he's bound to give interesting and entertaining lies in return.

They've already been in Plan B, I'll have another read of that and see what I can glean...

But don't be overly formal. Converse with him, but bear in mind the entire course of the interview. Kind of like driving...look DOWN the road instead of directly in front of you.

and mark gout's onto something too. the third person plural to disguise first person is irksome.

christ's teeth. right: forget everything i said: my advice is don't do the interview at all, and starve this self-important, underachieving little prick of the oxygen of publicity. his band sounds like it's unsigned for a reason.

(eeeesh)

thats otm, as well. if you get the tightened up, "Next Question" thing, tell him there's enough of john lydon in print...or try and back pedal a bit, and rephrase by throwing in some reference to a more common, less personal topic if you feel like it. (that can be damned hard, mind you).

as far as yr conidence, the only ting to do is let it go as it goes. and find yr feet. see if you can set up another interview before that just to run through...

(sorry mark! didn't mean to imply an excess of uric acid in yr joints)

confrontations do not necessarily make good copy (they can be very funny but often they are same-old-same-old, plus they are uneven contests as the writer has all the time in the world to "get the better" of his/her opponent after the bout is over)

paul morley once wrote up a genuinely inspired interview (w. x.moore of the redskins) as a second-person monologue as if from inside the thoughts of moore as he was being interviewed by morley --- this is maybe a once-only stunt but it was an awesome coup at the time!!

Why are you such a living cliche?

NEXT QUESTION!

Really, do you think this bad boy act is original?

He will definitely open up to defend that he is NOT a "bad boy" actor but that you are just asking stupid fucking questions and you're a stupid fucking press idiot and he doesn't need this shit...

So then you follow up with:

So you act like this around everyone, then? I guess it's not a bad boy act at all, but you're just a complete douche!

and yeah what eppy said abt the word "douche": use one newer-minted-coin insult plz

Signed,
Man who never reads blogs and finds the term "douche" incredibly insulting

It is also - and I am speaking from personal experience here - vitally important that you remember to switch the fucking thing on.

Sadly this is true, and it was not a good thing.

"will you move out of town in the middle of the night and steal my headphones?"

You treat them as an intelligent human beings from the start and make it clear you expect the reciprocal. If they start with the rote serial I'm doing an interviews with tiresome journalists thing, you lean forward on them 'til they crack and make a fool of themselves, which generates good copy, anyway.

Be prepared and don't insult the "interviewed" with mistakes and lapses in basic comprehension.

You'll get some people who really lock in and warm to the treatment. When this happens, even people who don't give a shit about the music will find the interview interesting. And you'll get fools you can crush up like tissue paper. When this happens, even people who don't give a shit about the music or the person interviewed will be diverted by the article.