Eric Spitznagel - Rock Stars on the Record

Advance Praise for Eric Spitznagels Rock Stars on the Record

Eric Spitznagel always delivers. It helps that he genuinely reads as a serious contender for the worlds biggest fan of whoever he happens to be interviewing. Its a magic trick and a thing of beauty to watch ultra-hip yung-uns and grizzled grey beards alike gleefully let down their guards and slip out of the armor of their own accomplishmentseager to match his unbridled fan-thusiasm as if theyve been challenged to a joy-off. These conversations effervesce.

Jeff Tweedy, singer-songwriter, Wilco front man, and bestselling author of Lets Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc.

Erics newest book is absolutely fascinating. Its hard to believe that no one has done this before, but now that Ive read it, it seems totally obviousexcept that most journalists wouldnt be able to get people to talk so openly and compellingly about something that, to an artist, may feel very private. I know these great musicians and their music better now. Thank you, Eric.

Daniel J. Levitin, bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and Professor of Neuroscience and Music at McGill University in Montreal

In asking a slew of rock stars about the record that changed their lives, Eric Spitznagel also ferrets out fascinating backstories and unexpected anecdotes. Who knew that Tommy Roes granddaughter calls him the Justin Bieber of the 60s? Or that Perry Farrell entertained his older siblings friends by dancing the Hully Gully at their parties? Rock Stars on the Record is so much fun, and more illuminating that youd expect.

Caroline Sullivan, author of Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair with the Bay City Rollers

Rock Stars on the Record is a journey led by a master interviewer. I cant remember the last time I enjoyed a book of interviews as much as this one. Entertaining and informative, its really a must-read for any fan of music and history and pop culture. (For the record, my own very special album is Hoobastanks 2018 Push Pull , which I am blasting as I write this.)

Mike Sacks, Vanity Fair Editor and bestselling author of Poking a Dead Frog , And Heres the Kicker , and Stinker Lets Loose , among other books

Ive been reading Eric Spitznagels interviews with rock stars for nearly a decade because Eric is an interviewer like no other. In Rock Stars on the Record , he does what he does best: gets musicians to open up in profound ways thatll make you laugh, saw awww, and everything in between.

Mike Ayers, author of One Last Song: Conversations on Life, Death, and Music

Copyright 2021 by Eric Spitznagel

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email

Diversion Books

A division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

www.diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition, February 2021

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63576-711-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-715-5

Interior illustrations: Rocker Leontura (iStock), Headphones Singleline (Shutterstock)

Printed in The United States of America

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Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file.

For Kelly and Charlie, the beginning and ending of everything.

I n September 1991, just weeks before Nevermind became the biggest album in the universe upon its release, the three members of Nirvana went on a London television program called Raw Power TV . Theyre scrappy and nervous, trying to impress each other as much as the offscreen interviewer, who asks about the first record they ever bought.

Bassist Krist Novoselic, the oldest at twenty-six, recalls that his first purchase was Led Zeppelin III on 8-track, and his horror upon realizing it didnt contain the crazy hydro-spiral wheel. The others agree that he was totally ripped off. Dave Grohl, the youngest in the group at twenty-two, brags that hes never bought a record because records are just shit; hed waited for CDs.

He was, of course, lying through his teeth. Years later, in an essay published after he was named 2015s Record Store Day Ambassador, Grohl reveals that his first vinyl purchaseacquired when he was just six years oldwas the 1975 K-Tel compilation Blockbuster 20 Original Hits/ Original Stars , featuring songs by War, Average White Band, the Hollies, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Edgar Winter Group, and Alice Cooper.

It was this record that changed my life and made me want to become a musician, Grohl writes. The second that I heard Edgar Winters Frankenstein kick in, I was hooked. My life had been changed forever. This was the first day of the rest of my life.

At twenty-two, Grohl didnt want his friends and bandmates to know his life could be changed by a K-Tel record with Kool & the Gang on it. (Reaching your mid-forties can help one confess to something like that.)

But then Kurt Cobain, twenty-four at the time of the Raw Power TV interview, admitted to something remarkable. His first record, or at least the first to have any meaningful emotional impact on him, was Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks.

For those who dont have the song permanently lodged in their memory like a musical scar, Seasons in the Sun was a 1974 global hit about a dying man (cause of death: likely too much wine and too much song) saying his final goodbyes to his father, a friend, or possibly a lover: We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun/ But the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time. Its part of the same cringeworthy soft rock milieu as You Light Up My Life and Afternoon Delight.

Its not a good song. But its the record that Cobain claims as his first, without a trace of tongue-in-cheek smirking, when Raw Power TV poses the question. Grohl is visibly horrified by the confession. I dont know that song, he protests, like a nine-year-old just learning that his best friend enjoys the company of girls. I didnt buy that record! Cobain teases him: Oh, it didnt come out on CD? And Cobain and Novoselic break into a mocking sing-along, leaving us to wonder if he was kidding after all.

In a diary entry published after his 1994 suicide, Cobain wrote that as a child, he cried to Seasons in the Sun. But this is all he shares. There are no details about why the song made him cry, or the context in which he listened to it. We only know that it was his first record, and on at least one occasion it brought him to tears.

There are a lot of reasons to grieve Cobains tragic death. The music he never wrote, the child he never saw grow up. What haunts me is that Ill never know the full story about Cobains adolescent fascination with Seasons in the Sun.

I dont know why this is so important to me. The answer would not unlock any of the mysteries to his songwriting genius. I doubt theres a direct link between a prepubescent Cobain hearing Terry Jacks sing Now that spring is in the air/ Pretty girls are everywhere, and the troubled-genius Cobain later writing, A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido.