Before apps were invented, doing celebrity profiles was how I dated. I didn’t drink or take drugs, so I wasn’t going to meet anyone at bars or clubs. And who’s going to make a pass at someone who spends her time alone listening to Leonard Cohen? For me, the only one who tried was Leonard Cohen himself, backstage at the Royal Albert Hall. Almost Famous has a very different tone if the precocious teenage writer is female.
The one man I married was also the only one who wasn’t intimidated by my list of exes. When it did emerge, and I awaited his disapprobation, still haunted by the judgment of previous men, he merely shrugged and said: “I take it as a compliment. You’ve got great taste in cock, girl.”
That’s Me Too isn’t it?
I didn’t drink or take drugs
Don’t do drugs, kids (they’re MINE).
“In my brief time as a 16-year-old writer at NME, I was dismissed as being “too much of a fan”. The inference by most men in the office was that we could just be sleeping with the bands we wrote so lovingly about. And that was true. We could! And?”
Because all critical reasoning goes out of the window and what should be a reasoned reflection on the interviewee becomes a hagiography which does not serve the reader.
“Because all critical reasoning goes out of the window” Yeah but we’re talking music print journalism here. It don’t matter either way, there’s nothing someone can write about a band or an artist that will make me like or dislike their music.
I think that Frank Zappa summed it up best… “Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”
Isn’t this what gamergate was about?
Quite funny when you remember that the man she married is the aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn.
I bet the NME editor at the time thought an attractive teenager who was doing the job so she could suck off rock stars was a good value way to secure interviews.