Marc Spitz author of How Soon is Never
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

I have read Spin magazine for as long as I can remember. When you’re a reading a magazine that has its finger on the pulse of pop and underground culture at the same time you never think much of the writers behind it. I always figured that Spin was created by a ton of guys in suits who were constantly kicking themselves in the ass for not being able to write for Rolling Stone or The New York Times Arts & Leisure section.

But after talking to Marc Spitz ,who is a senior writer at Spin magazine, I realized that the people who write for Spin are crazy fucked up music fans just like myself and most of their readers. Now I know that Spitz might even be crazier. He may have lost a good part of his sanity after co-writing the definitive history of LA punk in a book called We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk. In addition to his music journalism he has had seven plays produced which according to him have more cum in them than Ron Jeremy after drinking a yard of wheatgrass juice.

Like a true writer and journalist Spitz’s fingerprints are all over his work. After going back and reading much of his writing a Spitz piece is easily recognizable. But no work has been more personal to him than his first novel; the semi-autobiographical novel How Soon is Never?

The book is the story of Joe Green who is making a living as a rock journalist, discerning “cool” for kids born after he graduated from high school, still recovering from a wicked post-college smack addiction, and slumming with youngsters who ironically “appreciate” the seminal ‘80s music that once gave his life meaning. What if Joe Green can get the Smiths back together? What if reuniting the long-broken-up band can reverse the passage of time and bring back the magic of youth? What if it helps him win the heart of the woman he loves?

I got a chance to talk to Spitz about his huge cock, interviewing bands drunk and the general insecurity of writing a book about yourself.

Check out Spitz’s website for info on How Soon is Never?

Daniel Robert Epstein: I interviewed an old friend of yours today. He just said to say “Bobby Lemondrop says he'll meet you at the Special Olympics”. Do you know who that is?

Marc Spitz: Pete [Dinklage star of The Station Agent].

DRE: What does that mean?

MS: He played a character in my play called “I want to be adored”. Bobby Lemondrop was the name of the character. He brought the house down. Have you seen The Station Agent?

DRE: Yes I have and Peter is amazing.

MS: Will he will an Oscar? Can I say knew him when? I’m dying to do something with him again theatre wise but he’s probably too big for me now

DRE: [laughs] You’re in his bio.

MS: Wow.

DRE: What made you decide to do a semi-autobiographical novel?

MS: I think it’s a very autobiographical novel [laughs]. The book I’m working on now has nothing to do with me at all. Writing, How Soon is Never, was just a way of clearing house of my stories and irresponsible youth. I’m answering this horribly. Ask the question again.

DRE: [laughs] What made you decide to do a semi-autobiographical novel?

MS: Short answer, it’s my first novel and I didn’t know if I was good or bad at fiction writing. My only experience had been journalism and playwriting. I did a book a few years ago called We Got the Neutron Bomb and it was a history of LA punk. So in a way this new book was a reaction to that because I heard all these great old punk rockers tell me their stories and in a way I got really jealous. Because I’ve got some stuff in my life which I could use. Rather than do it as a memoir or an autobiography I decided to fictionalize it. I think every writer wants to write a novel at some point so I just wanted to see if I could pull it off.

DRE: Since it is your life, is it the easiest thing to start a fiction writing career off with?

MS: Since it’s based on my life I didn’t have to do a lot of research [laughs]. I did 34 years of research. It’s 50/50. There is stuff in there that’s definitely fictionalized, that never happened to me and I completely made up. Even though the character of Joe is based on me he’s not 100 percent me at all. He’s a character. It’s not a photo of Mark, wait now I’m referring to myself in the third person.

DRE: Like the Hulk.

MS: Right, but if I did that for the whole, would you mention it in the interview?

DRE: Of course I would, that’s gold.

MS: But it’s more of a painting, more abstract than a photo. It’s an abstract self portrait.

DRE: What were the advantages of making it semi-autobiographical?

MS: The advantage is that Joe can say things I can’t politically. I’m still employed at Spin magazine. He can rock the boat and I can pass it off as that character. I don’t think everyone at Spin is a vampire hack. The character does [laughs]. You can get away with more when you change names. I wanted that freedom because I’ve been a journalist for five years and you can’t fuck around with the facts. You have to play it really straight and adhere to a certain ethic when you’re a journalist but as a novelist you can do anything you want. I always wanted that freedom and I was jealous of other writers who had it.

There is stuff in the book about artists that are still popular now. In one form of the book that was sent out to critics I was ragging on Interpol. I changed Interpol’s name to Cute Band Alert which used to be a column in Sassy Magazine. I totally described them as something that wouldn’t even resemble Interpol. I made them into a Williamsburg, electro clash kitsch band. I like Interpol but I just had a bad experience interviewing them about a year ago. I was just drunk and stupid.

DRE: You were drunk? What’s it like to interview someone drunk?

MS: They were drunk too. It’s not like you interviewing me and we’d be drinking with each other. In rock journalism you drink with them sometimes you do drugs with them. It’s just a different environment. It’s a bit more of anything goes. I’d listened to the record and prepared for the interview but I met them at the Tribeca Grand Hotel, the martinis go around and one thing leads to another and sometimes you’re shouting at each other. I felt bad about it and that’s probably why it got into the book but that’s one example. It’s a difficult choice because using real bands can date the book but I’m not sure I mind that. I talked about it with my book editor and we decided so what. There is some slang in Catcher in the Rye no one uses anymore. It’s a time capsule of a book. They might be asking who The Strokes are sometime.

DRE: They might be saying that sooner rather than later.

MS: Well I left The Strokes the Strokes. Also the 80’s bands names I left the same. Some bands it was just like fuck it except for Interpol.

DRE: Did you have to show the book to anyone at Spin for any reason?

MS: Yeah. I took care to not base characters on anyone who is still there. I’ve seen a lot of people there come and go. For example there is a character based on Alan Light, who used to be the editor in chief. I told him I was basing this character on him and I asked him what he wanted his character’s name to be [laughs]. It was touchy but I got the sense that I was shitting where I eat but I said fuck it and I would do it anyway. I had these weird worst case scenarios in my mind where I would be called into the office and beat with a ruler. But I didn’t care, this is the story I wanted to tell and this is the way I wanted to tell it. Let the chips fall where they may. I hope there isn’t someone who sees a certain portrayal in the book, think it’s them and gets upset.

DRE: Are all your stories in there?

MS: Oh gosh no. I think I expose a lot through the character about my sick and twisted world but there is stuff I wouldn’t put in there or maybe I would [laughs]. Sure I would, nothing is off limits. Whatever I felt was appropriate to the story I used. I hope to write a couple of other books so there is still plenty of stuff.

DRE: What kind of theater work have you done?

MS: I have this group of people and we call ourselves Panic, like the Smiths song. Since 1998 I’ve been writing plays and we’ve been putting them up. We started at this place called Nada on Ludlow Street which is now a bar. A lot of the places we’ve done shows at are now bars or Gaps or Banana Republics. The plays are nothing like this book. The book is really personal and the plays are just sex, violence, mayhem, blood, piss and cum.

DRE: They sound good.

MS: These actors I work with will do anything. Anytime I write something I can count on them to go for it. They’re pretty wild. Its Off Off Broadway punk theatre. It had been a way for me to get some kind of ya-yas out creatively while working at Spin. Not that rock journalism isn’t creative because I think it is. Writing a journalistic piece or a book is very lonely, sure you have your editor but theatre is great because it’s a collaboration. That gives you that thrill of hearing your words every single night. It’s a gang mentality I like. I was always jealous of bands because they seemed like gangs and I was just going in there solo. I didn’t know what I was doing when I started writing for the theater so I was lucky enough to have been encouraged by The Village Voice and Time Out New York so now I almost feel like I know what I am doing. The last review I got for my play Gravity Always Wins mentioned that I had an aesthetic. I was like; wow I have an aesthetic now. I didn’t know I had one maybe I have to change the way I dress.

DRE: What is it like doing something so personal like this book?

MS: I’ve been having fucking nightmares every night. I wake up and go, what did I just do. What the fuck, why am I putting this out there. I can’t explain except that I had to. There is some shit in that book I wouldn’t say to a shrink let alone in public. I couldn’t say it but in the book I can, through characters I can. I finished the book six months ago and almost every single night since I have had anxiety dreams. I know it’s because of the book and I poured something into this book that most people don’t expose of themselves. I feel incredibly vulnerable.

DRE: What did people think of you, as a journalist, writing this book? Because this is what you do for musicians.

MS: Everyone I work with has been supportive and encouraging. They tell me they like it. They all think I’m ridiculous anyway.

DRE: Why do they think you’re ridiculous?

MS: Because I’m kind of ridiculous [laughs]. No one ever took me aside and asked me if this is what I really want to do. They are always like, if you want to do this that’s cool. It remains to be seen how it will affect my work. I might become the laughing stock of the music journalism world. I don’t care anyway. Just because I’m still doing this at 34 is enough to make me a laughing stock anyway. I need to get out of it.

DRE: I think you’re on the way.

MS: I always wanted Cameron Crowe’s career. He wrote a book then he wrote a screenplay based on that book then he started directing. I don’t want to direct my own stuff but I do want to keep on writing books and get into film. A lot of bad sentiment in the book is totally me.

DRE: Like what?

MS: I feel like an idiot sometimes at these shows hanging out with these kids. I’m old as dogshit. I feel like I should be in fucking walker. I still have my hair and teeth but I’m not 27 or however old I was when I started. Nobody wants to know a 40 year old rock journalist unless he’s someone big and respected.

DRE: Do you hate young kids who think they’re punks?

MS: No I kind of like it. I don’t think it means the same thing it used to be and I think they have it a lot easier than punks who get beat up for dressing like that. I’m not even sure if they’re aware of stuff like that. It’s great; they’re expressing themselves so fuck it.

I hate small children. I don’t know why maybe it’s some deep rooted thing about me maybe never having one. Little kids and animals I just don’t like and you can fucking print that.

DRE: I’m not asking you to put down Cameron Crowe or anything but do you think he’s a bit of a puss?

MS: No man one of the things I love about him is that he’s sentimental. He pulls it off. I think the way he does it is sort of bold. I could never be that sentimental so I guess I sort of envy him. I know people that think that and I’ve had debates with friends about it. I can see their side but as a preference I like that because I could never do that. Every time I see Jerry Maguire I know intellectually that this never happens but the way he does is really skilful and it gets you unless you’re a rock.

DRE: It must be tough to balance journalism and being an artist.

MS: The thing is that this isn’t a hobby. I’m not like an actor who has a band. First of all it’s all writing but a different form with a different set of rules. I don’t draw a line. It’s just what I do. I write so quickly I never had a difficult time managing everything. I wrote this book while I was at Spin and doing theatre as well. The balls are up in the air. I don’t have a girlfriend, pets or kids and if I did maybe it would be different.

DRE: I read how you’ve hung out with Courtney Love. Is it tough to hang out with Courtney Love then write objectively about her?

MS: Of course it is. It’s hard as fuck because you know you have to see them. I wrote the Spin cover story on The Strokes and I had to go on tour with them. I was pissing my pants because I knew I couldn’t walk down Avenue A without running into one of them. You just try to be respectful and try not to smile in someone’s face then trash them behind their backs. They know what I do for a living. If they say something is off the record then you leave it off the record. Then half the time they have as much dirt on me as I have on them.

DRE: What could they have?

MS: Things, its rock and rock and its not always pretty.

DRE: It gets dark in a room sometimes.

MS: I would never do that. I would never write a tell all Pamela Des Barres type book.

DRE: How was putting together We Got the Neutron Bomb?

MS: I wouldn’t wish a world history on my worst enemy. I just did one on Spin for Jane’s Addiction.

DRE: That was great.

MS: Thanks. It’s not a one man job; it’s a two man job. I couldn’t have done the book or the Jane’s Addiction thing without [co-writer] Brendan Mullen. Like Legs MacNeil didn’t do Please Kill Me [The Uncensored Oral History of Punk] alone, he used Gilian McCain.

It’s Francis Coppola directing Apocalypse Now levels of insanity. You’re coordinating pages and pages of testimonial into a narrative. It’s ridiculously hard. Anyone who does it well like Legs and when Spin did one on the Beastie Boys I have total respect for.

DRE: Do you think you did it well?

MS: Yeah I think we kicked ass [laughs]. When you’re dealing with punks though it’s a harsh audience, everyone is going to have problems with it. Like some people said we didn’t do enough on Black Flag but we tried to but Greg Ginn wouldn’t talk to us. Rollins gave us a few lines which was nice. But Bomb is what it is and it’s out there. I get a lot of emails from 15 year old kids who are learning about The Screamers and that’s really cool.

DRE: How is it working for Spin?

MS: It’s a great job and I think it’s a great magazine most of the time. It’s great to work with people who genuinely like music as much as I do. I can’t complain because they pay me, relatively speaking, a ridiculous amount of money to write about rock and roll. It’s a dream job.

DRE: I notice you wrote some kind of porn script.

MS: [laughs] I wrote a play called Shyness is Nice which went up at the Westbeth Theatre. One version I wrote of it was starting to dabble in porn. At some point he was going to produce Shyness and there was talk about not producing it as a theatre piece but shooting it as a porno movie. It got really close and I was worried about crossing that line. But I was like, fuck it. In a lot of ways it was a publicity stunt. There was a lot of sex in the original script but when we got close to doing it as a porno I wrote in all the money shots, blowjobs and tits. We didn’t end up shooting it but when we were publicizing it we decided to say it started out as a porno movie script. The New York Times was doing this piece when the play, Debbie Does Dallas, went up and they interviewed me and treated me as a pornographer. I had never been in the Times before and they described me as Marc Spitz, Spin writer and pornographer.

I love porn and I have nothing against it. I’m very proud of what I did and I would have loved to have seen it shot but the deal fell through because it wasn’t a straight porn movie. You don’t want a porno that has the title of a Smiths lyric. It could have been the first emo porn.

DRE: Would you like to have been in the movie?

MS: No but I could have because I’m huge.

DRE: What were you like as a young man?

MS: I was a full on Goth. I’m not sure I wore black lipstick to school but I might have. There was a comfort zone there because sex was pretty scary.

DRE: What did you like about gothiness?

MS: I liked the aesthetic. The black hair, black boots and vampire makeup. Even though it didn’t get me girls. I made out with a few but I didn’t have sex until college. No girl would let me near her pussy. I don’t know why. I wasn’t horrible looking, I was just weird. It was pre-Nirvana; pre Lollapalooza when weird wasn’t cool. Then at college I couldn’t stop getting laid.

DRE: They hate weird in high school but they love it at college.

MS: The day I walked on that campus in Vermont it was like flies on shit. I was definitely shit. It goes to your head a little bit especially at Bennington where you’re one of maybe a handful of straight guys. Granted I left college with a serious heroin addiction but I did have fun.

DRE: Tell me about that.

MS: I went in as a virgin who didn’t smoke and left as a heroin addict. I didn’t have any special diseases but that’s just by the grace of fucking god. I had no illegitimate children but a serious horrible heroin habit and a pack a day cigarette habit but I also wrote a book. It was a bad book but I wrote it as my creative thesis. I heard someone stole it from the Bennington Library. If it turns up somewhere I’m going to sue because I don’t want anyone to read it. I trying to be Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs and I was failing left and right. I didn’t find my own voice until I started writing rock journalism.

DRE: How hard is it put yourself into your rock journalism?

MS: That’s just a gift to me. I don’t want to explore because you don’t fuck with a good thing. The one thing I know I have is for the sake of telling a good joke or putting a fresh perspective on something I have no shame. I will say or write anything. I’ve always been that way. I had one experimental experience with a guy. The first thing I did is I went home and told my entire family at the dinner table. I was curious, I fooled around with a guy and I didn’t dig it. But I couldn’t wait to tell everyone. It’s the same thing with writing. I love to be inappropriate. I think that is what has given me a lot of attention.

DRE: Where did you grow up?

MS: In Queens New York, Rockaway. When I was five or six we moved to Long Island. I grew up in the Five Towns.

DRE: Me too. I grew up in Hewlett.

MS: Yeah I went to Lawrence High School then I transferred to Woodmere Academy. I’m worried about that because I called Woodmere Academy, Woodmere Academy in the book.

DRE: You know what? Fuck Woodmere Academy.

MS: [laughs] Are you going to put that in the interview?

DRE: Yeah I hate Woodmere Academy.

MS: Why did we beat you at sports or something? I was on the golf team so we might have kicked your ass.

DRE: No because it was a really nice looking school and I went to crappy Woodmere Middle School.

MS: I feel what you are saying because I went to Lawrence High. The only reason why my parents put me in Woodmere Academy is because I was failing out and refusing to go. They had to put me somewhere so they coughed up the money, otherwise I would have had no education.

The same thing with Bennington College. I had a near perfect verbal SAT score and Ds in everything else. I got rejected by my safe schools like SUNY Purchase. The only schools that would take me were like Bennington, Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence and Bard. I went to Bennington College because I had a crush on the admissions person I met.

DRE: How’d that go?

MS: I can’t talk about that.

DRE: I’m looking at How Soon is Never’s entry on Amazon.com. Have you seen what categories it’s under?

MS: Yeah its Children of divorced parents, Jewish youth, Long Island. There was another site that was recommending my book under the category of coping with divorce. My book ain’t going to help anyone cope with divorce. But that’s cool. Maybe someone who is not a total rock geek will buy it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/words/Marc+Spitz+author+of+How+Soon+is+Never/