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I count myself fortunate that, in my two decades as a journalist, I’ve had precious few interviews that were just really, really bad…although, for the record, whenever anyone asks me about my personal worst, however, I invariably cite a conversation that I had with Juliana Hatfield:
It started two hours later than I’d been told that it’d been scheduled, no-one had told her that it had been scheduled at all, and she clearly had no interest in talking to me at all, based on her general indifference to every question I had to offer and the constant stream of one-word answers that served as her responses. And to top it off, the most memorable part of the entire conversation - such as it was - came about only because I dared to close by asking the God-awful question, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be, and why?” Her horrified response: “I don’t want to be a tree!” (Okay, keep your cool, Juliana. It was hypothetical.) Still, as excruciating as that experience was for me…and the fact that it occurred in 1992 and it’s still tops on my list speaks volumes as to the level of excruciation, I think…it still doesn’t come anywhere close to this: Luke Burbank’s recent conversation with Sigur Ros. Wow. Luke, brother, I feel for you.
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Two interviews in my career have gone this bad. Dinosaur Jr. (went worse) and Robert Jr. Lockwood. I gave Lockwood a free pass, he was in his mid-’80s and just flipping tired of all of us. Dino…after 10 years of a grudge I am just starting to appreciate their music once again but if I cross J Mascis’ path again I may spit on his shoes for killing a deadline, making me look bad to my editor, and in general, not appreciating the fact that I was pimping his record to his hometown audience and playing ball for 10 minutes on the phone.
Like, if I were paparazzi or a particularly annoying fan, he would have treated me better. He was a total dick.
I should dig out the tape and see if I can digitize it for ESD (that’s a project but I should…not like I was blameless in this whole episode–I’m sure I sound like a complete ass in hindsight–and neither was the NPR journalist blameless…).
Let’s say hypothetically that the interviewer was to blame, which I don’t believe for a minute, but let’s just postulate that. Even if the interviewer should have greased the band down a little with more compliments or more granular questions…that band needs to understand that they wasted everyone’s time and should have just called in sick or hungover or whatever. What a bunch of clowns.
Some other band who was equally good just lost their slot and NPR listeners got the shaft. I help support NRP with my tax dollars. I am pissed at these import chumps for wasting them.
Ha, actually, that reminds me that an interview I once did with Murph, the drummer for Dinosaur, Jr., wasn’t all that spectacular, either. But it was no Juliana Hatfield. Also, I remember the conversation finally taking off when he started talking about how much he loved the band The Good Rats, and how “everyone else I knew always said they were shit, but I always liked ‘em.”
Graham Coxon was easily my worst interview. I never even transcribed it, it was so flat. He wasn’t mean, and didn’t give me short answers: he just gave me really serious and sober answers and didn’t have any sense of humor whatsoever. It was heartbreaking.
Wow, this Sigur Ros piece is really awkward. Note to self: no interviews with them for BE…