Les Borsai
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Les Borsai is the manager of bands such as Melissa Lefton, Unwritten Law and The Icarus Line. But he’s also had an insane life which he has chronicled in the book The Death of Wizdem.

The Death of Wizdem is a deranged coming-of-age tale about a boy discontented with the offerings of the so-called American Dream. The protagonist, Gabor, has grown up in a family devoid of love. His father is strict and abusive, his mother too conceited to notice him. Instead, he builds a family of mischief-making cohorts who indulge in rampant drug usage, promiscuous sex and a series of violent escapades as they try to escape the boredom of suburban life.

Buy The Death of Wizdem

Daniel Robert Epstein: It seems like you probably had a book in you for many years. Why did it take so long for you to write it?

Les Borsai: The easiest answer is that I’ve inadvertently got sidetracked by my music career. I hate the idea of having two careers because music has been really good to me. I’ve been able to do a lot of things as a music manager working in the record industry. I’ve had to bottle a lot of my own ideas up throughout that process of working on behalf of others. This is something I’d thought about for a long time and it took me a lot longer to write than I would’ve hoped. It probably took me about four years, meanwhile I’m already halfway through writing my second book in about two months.

DRE: I guess you broke the dam open.

LB: Once the floodgates opened, it just started to come. It’s really interesting once you start going with it and seeing how it starts to flow. I’m just amazed it wasn’t angrier than it was.

I decided to do the Death of Wizdem when I was 16 when it was happening because I truly believed that it was either going to be a unique experience for other people to be disgusted by or relate to. I wasn’t sure how many kids out there were involved in this kind of behavior. I let a couple people I work with read the book and they just were speechless that someone could have no accountability and have so much amorality. At 16 watching someone inject cocaine and hide in the shower for three hours because he thinks the police are coming to get him in some shitty fleabag motel across the street from Disneyland fit so well. It was like, “Here’s this clean Disneyland thing. It’s corporate America and yet right across the street you have the total opposite happening.” I always loved that.

DRE: How autobiographical is The Death of Wizdem?

LB: I would say about 85 percent.

DRE: Is that 85 percent your life or is it stories from other people’s lives?

LB: It’s 85 percent my life and the people I had surrounded myself with coming up in that suburban area of Orange County. When you run away at 16, that lends itself to lots of interesting situations and the book is a good bulk of them. The book is brutally honest and hard to put out there without trying to censor myself and worry about who I was going to hurt. That’s probably another reason that it took so long to do because I didn’t hold back at all, even where my parents were concerned.

DRE: What’s the reason for not making it a straight autobiography?

LB: I think it was easier to have the tool to embellish if I needed to. If I were to do it over again, I’d probably just do it 100 percent true. I like the idea of embellishing a little bit because I thought it made it a more interesting story, but now thinking back on it the truth is strange enough.

DRE: Have your parents read the book?

LB: I will never let my mother read the book because she just won’t understand. My father and I have a good relationship now, but as he was reading the book I probably called him more within those three days than I’ve called him in three years. To my surprise, he really loved it.

DRE: Did he realize what was going on with it?

LB: He did. The funny thing is it created a closer relationship between us. He said to me “Look, they don’t give you a rule book when you’re a parent. I’m Eastern European. I didn’t get it. I fucked up. Sorry. Now I understand where you were coming from.” I was really surprised by that reaction because I think I was probably as horrible as I could be with regards to what his behavior was when I was a kid. Getting pushed out the door without your shoes on at 16 and being told to “Go fuck yourself” is hard to swallow.

DRE: What’s it like having so much of your personal info out there now?

LB: Now I’ve had a lot of experience in my music career that outweighs some of the experiences in this book. I don’t think I’d ever put any of that out there. I got started in this business because of the dance music scene in England. It was a really creative process for me and then I sold my soul to the devil and worked for companies like MCA Records and things like that so I felt like I lost some of that honesty and edge. This book was a way for me to get back to my true self and say what I want to say without any apologies. I think of the people that are my friends in the music business as a surrogate family.

DRE: So being kicked out of the house ended up being a good thing for you.

LB: I think about that kind of thing quite often. I wonder if I would’ve been brought up in a different environment would I be on a different life path. I don’t know. The whole experience created who I am by default. I just ended up doing things and never really thinking about my future. That’s how I ended up being so happy sometimes.

DRE: What’s the next book about?

LB: The next one is about a man about my age who’s a loser living in an apartment. He’s a drug addict and he scores drugs from this Hasidic Jew that sells drugs to former child prodigies that have lost their careers. He calls it the dregs of Hollywood. He goes to a temp job everyday and he doesn’t have any relationships or friends. He gets involved in chat rooms and starts to lose balance in his life because all the real relationships he’s forming now are in chat rooms. He has no money so he can’t support the memberships anymore and each time one of the chatrooms shuts down, it’s like he’s going through a break up.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/words/Les+Borsai/