On the surface, his latest book, Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, is an anthology of interviews culled from Strauss' extensive back catalog, which includes conversations with everyone from Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Britney Spears to Chuck Berry, Leonard Cohen, and Johnny Cash. However, the acknowledgements section at the back of the book, which sums up all that's included, isn't just a laundry list of high profile names. Amongst the interviewees are some surprising and lesser known people (Kenny G, Patrick Miller, members of the Calabrian Mafia, et al.), and it's these inclusions that perhaps give an indication of the collection's greater purpose - that of a self-help book compiled from lessons learnt (or not, as the case may be) from those with problems on a grander scale than our own.
Because of this underlying narrative, readers are advised to read the book from start to finish, cover to cover, rather that skipping about to find preferred interview subjects as one might initially be tempted to do. "I think I maybe should have put a note or something in the beginning of the book about how it's supposed to be read," admits Strauss during the closing moments of our interview, "because I do think if you skip around for a favorite artist you won't get the experience."
In serving this higher purpose, Strauss chose to omit a few seemingly beyond qualified people. "I interviewed Stevie Wonder and Iggy Pop, two of what I would consider the greatest artists in the last fifty years," says Strauss, "and yet there weren't those profound moments in the interview so I left them out, even though they were huge artists who I'd love to have in a book."
The result of Strauss' labors is an anthology like no other, one that he hopes will stand the test of time. "You assume if you write a book it's not for the moment. It's for a longer period of time. I wanted a book that even in ten or twenty years would still be intrinsically interesting even if half of these people were obscure by then. I wanted it to hold up on its own."
Having read the 500+ page book in a surprisingly short space of time, in our humble opinion, Strauss has achieved this goal. After making the journey to the back cover, SucideGirls called Strauss up to talk about the things he's learned from interviewing the great and the late.
Nicole Powers: All your books have very different forms, and when you last came on SuicideGirls Radio and I asked you about that, you said that you're inspired by other books. What was the inspiration for the structure of this one?
Neil Strauss: Before I do a book I'll do research. I bought every single anthology I could possibly buy by writers I liked and respected, whether music writers or journalists or fiction authors. I bought all these anthologies and I read through them all, or skimmed through them, some of them. And I realized they were all semi-boring. By the time you were done you were bored of the person's voice, and that the only people they really appealed to were people who were already fans. So I felt screwed, because my whole life, spending all this time writing all these thousands and thousands of articles for The New York Times and Rolling Stone, I would save the best ones and I just couldn't wait to put out the anthology of my work like all the writers and critics I was a fan of have done. When it came down to it I realized they don't hold up on their own - that if somebody who had never heard of your writing went out and bought that book, they might be disappointed. So it's interesting because this is the only book where I had no model for it at all. I had no plan even to do it like I ended up doing it, but it seemed to me the only way to make it intrinsically interesting...
NP: It starts out as a cleverly done anthology, where you thread interviews together - like you'll be talking to one person and then they'll mention someone else and then you cut to an interview with the person they've just mentioned. But then I began realizing that you've created something bigger than that. You've constructed a self-help book using advice gleaned often from reading between the lines of what your subjects have said.
NS: Yeah. I think that's totally true, that there was a goal and maybe there's an influence. There's a book by John Berger called Ways of Seeing where there are chapters that are just images. As you look at the images in a row, ideas will come to you without them having to be said. So maybe that book is a slight influence structurally.
The idea was by putting say Christina Aguilera confessing her domestic abuse, followed by Ike Turner talking about Tina, followed by Lady Gaga talking about a different kind of abuse, followed by someone else talking about their incest experiences, you start to get your own ideas on abuse and its effects from both the perpetrator as well as from the victim's [point of view].
I kind of wanted people to naturally come to those ideas. And of course these are people who live life at a much higher level of intensity than most of us have. And I definitely think when I was doing the interviews themselves there were things I was trying to work out in my life and I was using them for sort of free therapy.
NP: As a writer, especially when you spend time with your subjects, you can end up taking on the therapist role, and that's a difficult thing to balance. Because as a writer you are defined by what you print, but as a human being who writes you are defined by what you don't print. It's a difficult line to draw.
NS: Huh, I never thought of it like that.
NP: And because this book contains many previously unpublished interview outtakes, I know with one band in particular you had to make a phone call to warn them that certain revelations were going to be made public. Were there other instances where you had concerns about printing stuff?
NS: Yeah, but it was still going to be printed. I'm definitely not callous about it, but I assume that they're professionals and anything they tell me in the context of an interview is going to be part of the interview unless they flat out say this is off the record. So there are examples: When I called the guys from At The Drive-In to tell them that the fact that [Omar Rodrguez-Lpez] mentioned that he was an incest survivor was going to be in there. And Christina Aguilera, I remember she'd never talked about being a victim of domestic violence from her father before, and so I called her and her mom to let them know it was going to be in there. But it wasn't like they asked for it not to be in there. I wasn't going to remove it. I was just going to give them a fair heads-up so they're aware of it. It wasn't to be callous. It was just that, you know, I didn't trick them into saying those things.
NP: You seemed to have a very clear objective in mind when you do your interviews. During your conversation with Soul Asylum you explain to them that you're not writing the article for the band, you're writing it for the people that like their music.
NS: Yeah, I think my goal is always...but it changed. It's funny because I really think journalism has changed. Because back then there was this golden age of journalism where if someone was doing a Rolling Stone cover story and they just recorded a record, the cover story was almost part of the communication process. You did your record and that's your art. Then you do your Rolling Stone cover story, and that's how you would tell your fans, your listeners and the general public, what this album is about, what you went through while you were recording it, what your intention is, and where you are in your life. You were their mouthpiece. And obviously in the last five or so years they can just Twitter that, or send it to their mailing list, or make YouTube videos. They don't need you anymore as their mouthpiece, so it's changed now, that whole relationship.
NP: In what way?
NS: I think most of a journalist's duty now, sadly, is to try and get some revelation that will be picked up by a bunch of other websites so they can get a lot of traffic...But I'm going to do a Rolling Stone cover story next week, and my goal is to read everything that's ever been written about that person, watch every movie, and listen to every album they've ever done. My goal is to A, advance the dialog about the person, say something new that hasn't been said before, and B, to find out who they really are...I want to really get in their head and show the public who that person is underneath the mask. And maybe even show them who they are - things they may not realize about themselves...
I mean I'll never judge in the article, I'll just show them as they are. Some people afterward love the articles. Like Tom Cruise afterward sent a letter saying, "This article is great. My mom saw it and she thought you just nailed me perfectly." On the other hand, after the Soul Asylum one - and it was definitely no more or less judgmental, if anything some people thought Tom Cruise came off worse. [Soul Asylum's lead singer Dave Pirner] was really upset because he thought I was trying to portray him as an alcoholic, which I wasn't doing. You can tell their comfort level with who they are by their response to the article.
NP: I noticed on the back cover of the book there's a note which alludes to some correspondence that Phil Collins sent to you.
NS: Uh-huh.
NP: I take it that was one very unsatisfied customer.
NS: Yeah. I wrote a review of him for The New York Times. I thought it was a really bad concert, but I was holding back and trying to make it not so negative. He sent this two-page, handwritten letter on Peninsula Hotel stationery basically just railing against me for having his head on a plate. His last words were, "Neil, fuck you."
NP: Well this is from a man that split up with his wife by fax.
NS: Somebody said they saw an interview with him later where he actually said, "I once wrote this guy a letter and I felt really bad about it afterward." It was really an angry letter. It's something you'd expect from Trent Reznor, not from Phil Collins, which is why it's framed in my office now.
NP: In the interview that you did with Trent Reznor you gently prod him about the consequences of his drug use. Then there's another interview that you do with Gary Wilson where you suggest that he sees his dad before he dies. Obviously the therapy goes both ways though. What insights have the people that you've interviewed given you?
NS: It's funny. You know, I didn't realize [it goes] the other way too, but it is true that I am at the same time giving people advice in their life.
I remember even with Chuck Berry, trying to help him get over the cross he carries over the scandals he had 40 years ago that still makes him bitter and angry - that's why it's called Everyone Loves You When You're Dead.
I know you're asking the opposite question...I think a lot of the questions I've had are about the importance of your work - about relationships, and love versus work and career and art. Whether it's with Lenny Kravitz or Joni Mitchell, I've had those conversations talking about which they see as more important...Sometimes these people don't follow their own advice, but they definitely were usually good at giving it.
NP: For me, one of the exciting moments in an interview is when you have that aha moment with a subject, where they realize something about themselves that they haven't thought about before, or they make a connection that they haven't made before.
NS: I love that.
NP: Is there a moment that you particularly remember that was like that?
NS: Yeah, there's one, and this one is more because it was so funny. But I love it. It's in the Orlando Bloom interview. It's like my favorite line in the book. I don't know why. It's so small. I was asking him, "Have you noticed that in all of your movies you have very little dialog?" He thinks it over and he's like, "I don't know, are you sure about that?" I point out some examples, and he's like:
[Excerpted directly from Everyone Loves You When You're Dead for clarity:]
"You know what? Maybe the precedent was set with Lord of the Rings, because Legolas didn't say very much at all. But what he did say was really important. He'd say, like, 'Orcs' or something. Actually, he didn't say anything really very important. I don't know (trails off and starts thinking)..."
He was getting this epiphany that really he had these characters that were given [very little dialog].
And then there were other times, say with Chuck Berry...when I said these things that were scandals, yes, they don't go away, but after the moment they actually make you more interesting. They make you not Pat Boone. And it was sort of him realizing these scandals that are long gone, that people don't care about them anymore...
NP: Right, you talked about how the scandals become stories, and because of the distance of time people know the stories but they remember them without any level of judgment - that was really key I think.
NS: Yeah, yeah, again, hopefully, at age 83, that was an aha moment for him. The reason I named the book Everyone Loves You When You're Dead is meeting all these people who are icons and legends who you admire for their work, and seeing that they're haunted by old scandals and bad reviews everyone else has forgotten about. I think there was a note to myself: let go of those small things and you can live your life happier and be proud of your accomplishments, and not die thinking that everybody hates you because you got one bad review.
NP: There are other times where I wonder if your subjects have yet to grasp the weight of what you may be implying, or if they'll put it together after the fact. Particularly with the abuse section in the book. You talk about Christina Aguilera and the domestic violence, Lady Gaga and the abuse that happened following her drug use, and Alanis Morissette with the statutory rape. You don't put it into words, but you imply that the abuse has profoundly affected their art and their careers.
NS: I think that's interesting too, that sometimes you leave the interview knowing more about the artist than they know about themselves. Sometimes too, maybe they'll have that epiphany when they read it - if they're open to it. But I think Lady Gaga isn't open to it. Even Jenna Jameson, when I did the book with her, wasn't open to thinking that. The two issues she had when she was young and sexually abused, she doesn't think that those changed her, or affected her, and led to her career - and I don't necessarily think that's true. Even with Lady Gaga, I think she hasn't dealt with what she seems to be implying in the book, which seems to be that she was assaulted very violently a couple times. I think she hasn't dealt with that, but I think her exhibitionism and the way she leads her career kind of speaks to that. It was so obvious from how she leads her life - it's clear that she's a trauma survivor.
NP: It concerns me the way Gaga's getting more extreme. It's gotten to the point where she's becoming a parody of herself. The whole egg thing did seem like a big cry for help.
NS: The one genius thing about the egg thing is it's a great way to go through the red carpet without having to talk to anyone or get your photo taken. But on the other level, when I interviewed her, I said, "What are you going to do when the backlash happens?" And she's like, "What do you mean the backlash? There's not going to be a backlash." I'm like, "Anybody who gets to your level at some point the culture turns on them. Everything they do is all of a sudden seen as horrible, and then later it puts them back on top again. That's how the culture works. They tear you down and they bring you back up." And she goes, "Well my karma is good. I'm good to everybody." Then she calls her assistant over and says, "I'm good to you, right?" The assistant is like, "Yes, of course you're good to me." And she's like, "See, my karma is good. It's not going to happen." I thought, oh man, when this happens they're going to tear you apart.
NP: It's kind of already happening. I know that there is a section of the gay community that is upset at her latest single "Born This Way" because they don't want to be aligned with the freaks of this world.
NS: That's one of those things where I think it's not intentional on her part. She calls her fans monsters...But there is that element that it's like well I'm a broken person...
NP: She views herself as a broken person and is drawing connections between herself and the gay community. But the gays are like, "Hey, we're not broken. We're whole but we're gay." She's comparing her broken soul with people that do not consider themselves broken.
NS: I haven't heard that critique. That's a really smart critique and accurate. So yeah, it will be interesting to see, especially because that's an audience she thought she could count on. That's the one she's seen who have kept the careers of Madonna and Cher and other people going...
NP: Her fallback audience.
NS: Yeah, but by pandering to them so much she's almost turned them off.
NP: Her response to the question you posed about what will happen once the backlash starts touches on something that you wrote about in an article you did for The Wall Street Journal. In it you talked about how a degree of blind faith is almost essential to the success of an artist.
NS: Yeah. That was one of the things that I found fascinating was looking over all those interviews together, seeing the patterns and seeing what happened in their life after the interviews - who went up and who went down, who died and who thrived. That was an interesting and surprising lesson to me, that those who had faith, not just belief in God, but believed their success was part of God's plan for them - which, of course, is mostly hubris - that belief sustained them through the hard times.
The opposite examples, and I didn't mention it in The Wall Street Journal, but Jewel, for example, at the time of that interview in the book she said, "Why am I here? Why not all these other people who were struggling just like I was. I don't feel like I deserve this anymore than they do. It isn't fair that I got here in five years." At that time she had I think her second Top Ten single, and since that interview she's released like eight more records and not had another Top Ten single. Or the White Stripes who were just wringing their hands and saying, "We're from another planet, we don't belong here." And, of course, they just broke up...
NP: Going back to that Chuck Berry interview, how awesome would it be for an artist that's going through a similar shit storm to read that and have the perspective that you gave Chuck Berry. That yeah, it's going to suck for six months or six years, but down the line it's going to make you a more interesting person and it will make the comeback even sweeter.
NS: Yeah, or even to see that, Madonna, when she first came to New York, was this nerd who was uncomfortable at a club. We've all been there, so it definitely makes these things relatable.
NP: One of the most profound lines is during your interview with Trent Reznor. You talk about how the idea that anyone fits in is a delusion, and that no one really fits in. Where did you get that concept from?
NS: I think that's something you get from interviewing everybody. The people you think are the popular people feel like they're outcasts inside. Everybody feels like that, whether it's Snoop Dog or Madonna and Lady Gaga...they all really feel the same. They all feel alone in their castles they've built.
NP: And the ironic thing is that fame doesn't help them feel like they fit in. If you don't sort out those issues before you get famous, you'll still feel awkward and like you don't fit in, but in front of a bigger audience, which amplifies the problem rather than solving it.
NS: That was one of the biggest takeaways of the book, that you meet all these people who think money and fame are going to cure their problems, and it just amplifies your problems. I think two takeaways are, A, fix your problems now because they'll get worse if you become more famous or more wealthy. The second one is the celebrities who weren't raised with unconditional love, who weren't raised with at least a parent who they knew loved them when they were growing up, then seek that love so aggressively from the world that it backfires and it becomes sort of pathetic. So besides having faith in something, those were the two other axioms of becoming stable when you become more famous.
NP: What were your parents like?
NS: One always grows up and thinks they're in the most miserable shitty situation, which I definitely felt, but at least it came from love, even if the intentions and the actions were misguided. In my book Rules of the Game I put: "Dedicated to your parents. You may want to blame them for what's wrong with you, but don't forget to give them credit for what's right with you."
I think that was the motto in the end, that's the way I came to understand my parents...I mean I definitely give them credit for the - let's just say the lack of self-esteem that led to the relentless pursuit of women in The Game. I'll have to also give them credit for the drive and intelligence and excitement about literature and writing as well...
NP: Putting together an anthology is very much a way of closing a chapter on a life. Are you now thinking about your own end game?
NS: I definitely think this is the way to wrap up the chapter on it. I think I've gone through a couple things...for example I used to do a lot of reviews and I stopped reviewing altogether one day. It was probably a consequence of becoming a writer and getting reviewed myself. It was also partly talking to musicians after you've reviewed them and discussing the reviews and realizing that any time someone records a record or makes something they put their heart into it. They care about it. They don't put it out because they think it's shitty. So who are you to say this is three stars or four stars, or this is good, this is bad. Obviously it was something true to themselves.
Kenny G, for example, when his new record came out, I knew I could have reviewed him for The New York Times and it would have been a typical kind of slam, but I thought why don't I meet this guy and see what he's about. What I learned is Kenny G is playing what he feels. That's his personality. It's kind of gentle and kind of soft. There's not a real dark side. He's a sweet person and he's playing sweet, gentle, vapid music because that's on some level [who he is]. I realize I'm sounding condescending, and maybe I am, because I'm a more dark person than Kenny G unfortunately. I'm sure I'd be happier if I wasn't. But I thought I've got to respect Kenny G because he's playing what he feels.
So you realize those things and so I stopped reviewing, and I think this anthology was, on some level, closing the door on the interviewing/profiling part of life. Because looking back on all those articles, no matter how you want to rationalize it as a public service or art, you're really part of a promotional machine in the end. So I wanted to close the door on that and really try to focus on writing the books that I'm passionate about.
NP: So is the cover feature that you're currently working on for Rolling Stone going to be one of your last?
NS: Yeah, that's the plan. At this point I'll only interview someone if it's someone who I really, really, really want to meet and really want to get inside their head, and I have enough time to be allowed to do that. I won't turn down a Jack Nicholson feature, but I will turn down a Justin Bieber feature.
Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness comes out via It Books on March 15, 2011.
Neil Strauss will be the special in-studio guest on SuicideGirls Radio next Sunday, March 13. Listen live at 10 PM PST on Indie1031.com/.