If you could interview one person, who would it be?
Between episodes of Spartacus: Blood & Sand and during cups of green tea, I spent the latter half of yesterday focused on the concept of musician interviews. I’ve never given an interview to a professional musician before, and I have no idea if an interview I gave would be any good. However, I’ve developed a fairly good idea of what makes a good interview. I think a lot of the interviews I watch are bad, and this is for a number of reasons. Most predominantly, bad interviews involve some degree of uncomfortability. In a Pitchfork Reviews Reviews post from a few weeks ago, the author observes the practice of taking the artist (in this case Nathan Williams) out of an interview space to a more informal setting (in this case it was a green room so they could smoke) which makes them more comfortable, and therefore more genuine with their answers. Often in music reviews I see the author noting that when the mics are switched off, the subject is a completely different person. This is infuriating for the reader, of course, because the conclusion is that the person off the record is more desirable (due to his inaccessibility), and that the reader only gets to see the persona gives the sense of being ripped off. Whether the inclusion of that observation by whoever’s writing the article is detrimental to music journalism isn’t relevant to my point so I’ll leave it up to you to decide (or maybe I’ll say something about it later).
Chuck Klosterman is a great resource for novice interviewers. Klosterman, whose music journalism, which included some brilliant interviews, was prominent in his rise to recognition, has experienced both sides of celebrity and the interview process, first as author and then as subject. His writing on either side is incredibly illuminating and while Lester Bangs comparisons seem inevitable but essentially meaningless, I regard him as one of the best interviewers I’ve read (I’m open to suggestions on others, though). His most practical advice comes from the second episode in PopMatters’ What’s The Write Word series, where he advises “If an interview subject isn’t responding to your questions, ask them specific queries about their craft (i.e., “How did you tune your guitar to get that specific sound?,” “What is the initial step when writing a pop song?,” etc.)”.
What makes a good interview though? Some decent fucking questions, to begin with. Making an artist comfortable is a good start, but you have to capitalize on the candor it’s supposed to produce. While I imagine some interviewers feel an obligation to ask “informative” questions, this is a fundamentally useless practice. All that information is already on Wikipedia, the band’s website, and a hundred thousand fan websites. The best interviews I’ve seen/read occur when the interviewer engages the subject as an artist rather than a spokesperson. This reflects on what Chuck Klosterman was saying. Basically, I think any interview where the interviewer avoids asking “What was it like working with so and so?” or “What was it like going back into the studio after nine months of touring?”, because “What was it like…?” is not a question worth hearing the answer to. It’s a question dripping in apathy and disinterest, and inevitably you’ll receive an answer in kind, yet I hear it asked so often.
There are a lot of celebrities I’d like to know, but not many I’d like to interview. I’d really like to know Charlie Brooker, because he’s an acerbic, witty gentleman with a colossal, self-aggravating appetite for pop culture, but I think his motives and ambitions are fairly plain, so I have no interest in interviewing him.
Who I’d like to interview given the chance and why:
Russell Brand
I’d like to find out how self-aware he is, especially at this stage in his career where I don’t think he can achieve much more success than he already has. I’d like to know whether he’s oblivious to this or not.
Kanye West
Mostly for a discussion about racism and misogyny with regards to the contemporary rap scene, and pop culture in general, and how it’s changed in the past decade.
Kid Cudi
Probably to discuss the emergence of the “blipster” and how indie music is influencing rap.
Wyatt Roy
While politicians are notoriously tight-lipped, and I imagine as a 20-year-old he’s probably quite susceptible to party indoctrination, I’d still like to find out whether he’s a mouthpiece or reflective of new ideas entering a stringently conservative party.
Christopher Price
Expose on the man behind the googly eyes.
