Hopelandishly Devoted to You
By now, you've probably seen NPR's disastrous interview with Sigur Rós, in which the immovable object of a reserved, possibly exhausted internationally famous arty band faces off with the irresistible force of vaguely worded but super-earnest questions. Say what you will about the morality of posting the video of the interview, but our guess is a majority of you have, at one time or another, been given the chance to interview someone who made music you loved -- which means there have to be some amazing disaster stories out there. Ever been dismissed? With profanity? Thrown out the tape on your way back to the office? Thrown out the album when you got home?
Posted at 5:09 PM
Tags: Sigur Rós
triple disaster: cranky-from-hunger interview subject, a/c in the room ruined the tape, and i had to get on a plane for a family member's funeral. got back just in time to be fired.
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i'm not sure if a better interviewer could've broken through their short answers.. but man, that's a terrible interviewer.
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A friend of mine interviewed cary brothers at a party - she was a few cocktails in, and he asked if she was drunk. Then he suggested she put down her drink.
ouch.
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my friend baked kevin barnes from of montreal cookies, and when he tried to give them to him after a show, kevin was just like "i don't eat sweets."
but yeah, that interview was painful. i did like when jonssi called hopelandic "fucking bullshit".
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icy like the music. slow like the music.
there WERE an awful lot of yes/no questions.
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& the non y/n questions were like, "how is your stuff so great at things? is it because you did that stuff, like, first, or something become that stuff after some time?"
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I interviewed Frank Black for a school paper about six years ago. He was supposed to get a wakeup call prior to me calling; instead, my phone call woke him up at some ungodly hour. To this day I cannot bring myself to listen to the tape.
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I had the displeasure of trying to get a sound bite from Rick Ocasek for my podcast at the Bob Dylan "No Direction Home" premiere. Sadly, this is how it went:
Me: Hey Rick. I just want to ask you a quick question for my podcast. It will only take a second. Who would win in a fight between you and Todd Rundgren?
Rick: I'm not going to answer that.
Me: I love "Heartbeat City."
Rick: Excuse me.
Total jerk. We deal with egos in this business. It sounds like Iceland has some BIG ones.
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Once I almost got beaten up by that Stereophonics prick Kelly Jones . I had to interview him and Stuart Cable- who was still their drummer at that time- during a music festival. My first question was –rather foolishly- about the difficult relationship Jones had with the British media. That pissed him off, right away, so he started answering all my questions with “yes”and “no” . That poor Stuart Cable did his best to calm things down, giving somewhat longer answers where possible. After five very long and painful minutes I told Jones & Cable I had all the material I needed for the interview- which was true, as I was going to interview ten more artists that day, and I just needed some quotes, nothing in- depth. Jones asked, quite upset now : “What? Aren’t you going to ask us anything about our new album?”
New album? I had no idea they even had a new album out, so I replied “No, I don’t think so”
“YOU DON’T THINK SO? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! GET THIS GUY AWAY FROM ME!”
And then he stood up and I got out of there as fast as I could, because, believe me, he WAS going to beat me up. That prick.
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One thing I learned from Ira Glass is that when you interview someone, you always tell a story about yourself first. It makes people become more personable.
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I interviewed Juliana Hatfield in '94-ish. She seemed put off by the whole thing and answered every question "Yes" or "No". After the interview I went to the ticket office and was told I wasn't on the guest list for the sold out show. Juliana happened to be walking by at the time and was going in the front door of the club (Bogarts in Cincy) and I asked if she could help get us in. "Um, I can't, sorry." She couldn't get us into HER show? I interviewed her 10 years later and she was great - we talked for nearly an hour.
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I'm Icelandic, so let me clear this up for you real quick. Watch the first ten seconds of that interview again. The interviewer fucks up EVERY SINGLE NAME he reads. Then asks them how he did with those names, as if to imply it's somehow Iceland's fault for giving people stupid names.
Yes, Sigur Rós are notoriously reclusive but I've watched dozens of interviews with them from both Iceland and abroad and they've never EVER been that rude to anybody. Reclusive and shy does not mean rude.
Bottom line: tired, yes. Shy, yes. Reclusive, yes. Probably jet-lagged, yes. Royally insulted? You betcha. Then the interviewer proceeds to ask them bullshit yes/no questions that basically all go like, "did you think you'd be so special?" or "how does it feel to be so not-normal?" ... and then he's surprised at their non-responsiveness?
My name is Kristján and I used to live in the US for a while a few years back. Believe me, I understand their irritation. "Krist... ján? What, your parents couldn't name you Brian or something?"
Note to interviewers: if you can't pronounce the individual band members' names, just DON'T. Call them Sigur Rós and be done with it. If you sat down with R.E.M. and called them Michael Stipes, Pete Berg and Mike Millers, and then proceeded to make fun of their stupid, shitty names, how'd you think that interview would go?
And as for that one commenter who said Iceland has massive egos, look in the mirror dude. The interview went bad because an American couldn't fathom how un-English-sounding the bandmembers' names were, going so far as to repeat their full names AGAIN at the end of the interview, as if to underline their absurdity.
Four shy Icelanders in New York having their names and nationality mocked? Yeah, their egos are massive, alright.
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There are so so many. But my favorite is probably Peter Criss from KISS. His 'people' agreed for him to do an interview in which I would ask him questions about his solo album, but all the while KISS-related activity would be happening in the background (e.g., a janitor with KISS makeup comes through, the makeup person is wearing a KISS t-shirt and adds some KISS-like makeup onto my face, and I call her Beth...you get the idea). We were surprised he agreed to it, but his people said he was really excited.
Well...on the day of the shoot, he gets there and he has NO prior knowledge to the idea and refused to do it. Don't you just love it when the PR people give absolutely no warning to the artist? Fantastic. Given the creative vision of our show, we couldn't justify doing a serious interview with Peter Criss about his songs about 9-11, so after a bit of heated exchange with our producer, he left. The funny part was, right behind the door where they were arguing, one of the writers was standing in full-on KISS makeup. I would have loved to see Peter's reaction, but I think my writer would have gotten his ass kicked.
And then of course there's the incident with David Cross and J. Mascis...buuuuut that's one I'll save for my grandkids.
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The band is not to blame at all. What kind of ignoramous leads off with a question like, "did you start playing 'this kind of music' or did you start off playing 'normal' music?" What kind of insulting question is that to ask? This whole interview can be attributed to that dude's utter ignorance.
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And then NPR has the gall to title it "when good interviews go bad."
It was never a good interview.
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I did a phoner with someone from Ambulance LTD that was a complete disaster. He would snicker and give one or two-word answers to all my questions. I ended up saying "this interview isn't really working for me, so let's just end it."
My questions probably weren't the greatest, but what the fuck are you supposed to ask such an inconsequential and bland band?
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Ambulance LTD is a great band, and I had an OK time interviewing the bassist once.
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even if the band you're interviewing is bland and inconsequential, you still need to do the proper backup/research before going into it. i don't care how much they suck, that's just lazy reporting/journalism.
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I've conducted a bunch of fun interviews including an on-air interview with Frank Black in which he stayed for 90 minutes(!) and did about six songs. The two worst that stick in my mind were Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera) and John S. Hall (King Missile).
With Roddy, things were going well and then the subject of Morrissey came up and he mentioned they were friendly. I innocently asked if they were 'mates' simply using a common British expression for friends and he thought I was implying they were lovers. It went all downhill from there all live on the air. I didn't save the tape.
With John S. Hall, I was well prepared but he decided to answer every question sarcastically and after about three questions, I said, "Well clearly you don't want to do this, I'm just trying to help you promote your band and music, so I'll just end this now." And I hung up on him (on air). He called back about a half hour later really apologetic and redid the interview on-air and apologized on the air to me and the listeners. From there, everything went quite well and he spent about twenty minutes and was quite funny and personable.
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Kristjan, you're one angry, angry Icelander...
Best interview I ever did... hmmm, Maybe Young MC - the guy had one hit, and it seemed it had made him happy for the rest of his life! :)
Worst... I could probably make a list, but I'll go with Sasha - started out with a "do I call you Alex or Sasha?" question, which is never a good ice-breaker (possibly along the lines of the name-mangling that Kristjan refers to...). Monosyllabic to the extent that I think the whole story (which was only about 1000 words) used one quote! That said, I interviewed him a year or so later, and it went much better.
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This guy was a terrible interviewer. I'm completely untrained and I can think of better questions to ask bands. How about mixing it up and asking them questions they haven't answered 100 times already. What's hopelandic? wtf, is that the best he could come up with? And those Yes-No questions are bullshit. If you answer the questions for them, what do you expect them to say other than, "Yeah, that's about right."
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poor guys. they're not the interviewing type. that was almost as painful to watch as it was to listen to the audience questions at the new yorker q & a.
"who are your influences?" come on, can we be more obvious guys?
i think their shyness makes them that more endearing.
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At a small club in Scotland I interviewed Sufjan Stevens probably six months after Michigan came out. Things were going fine while asking him a few questions about the state in question. I asked if I could know more about his opinions regarding faith and pop music and he balked. He got very cagey and said he didn't want to talk about that because of what his answers would sound like in a "hipster" newspaper. It hurt my feelings that he would assume I would put his words about faith and music in a pejorative light. I come from a faith based upbringing myself. In hindsight I totally understand. I'm sure he's been burned that way many times by many small crappy publications and has every right to not talk about something as personal as his faith to the press. But still that moment was so awkward. He just clammed up and I felt so bad for possibly offending him before he was going on stage. When I went back to the tape the next night I found out that a friend's roommate had taped over my interview to record a lecture. At first I was pissed, but then realized it was a blessing that I didn't have to relive that moment ever again. Except every time I listen to Michigan. Eergh.
Hey, at least I didn't get his name wrong.
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