{"id":10420,"date":"2017-12-01T16:22:18","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T21:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/takenote\/?p=10420"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:53:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:53:52","slug":"stephen-davis-on-marley-zeppelin-fleetwood-mac-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/takenote\/stephen-davis-on-marley-zeppelin-fleetwood-mac-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Davis on Writing about Zeppelin, Stevie Nicks, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-inside-the-making-of-landmark-rock-biographies-from-marley-to-zeppelin-to-fleetwood-mac\" style=\"text-transform:none;\">Inside the Making of Landmark Rock Biographies, from Marley to Zeppelin to Fleetwood Mac<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none;\" title=\"Libsyn Player\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/5997332\/height\/90\/theme\/custom\/thumbnail\/yes\/direction\/forward\/render-playlist\/no\/custom-color\/87A93A\/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"90\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\">\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div class=\"readmore-hidden\">Stephen Davis has spent five decades turning backstage access into era-defining books. From the <em>Boston Phoenix<\/em> and <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> to bestsellers like <em data-start=\"188\" data-end=\"208\">Hammer of the Gods<\/em> (Led Zeppelin), <em data-start=\"225\" data-end=\"240\">Walk This Way<\/em> (Aerosmith), and <em data-start=\"258\" data-end=\"275\">Gold Dust Woman<\/em> (Stevie Nicks), he\u2019s chronicled rock\u2019s power\u2014and its mess. In this conversation, Davis traces the path that made him a biographer musicians actually read: choirboy beginnings, antiwar Boston, a life-changing immersion with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, and months in Jamaica reporting the reggae wave for <em data-start=\"584\" data-end=\"603\">Reggae Bloodlines<\/em>. He also discusses his reporting tactics (why primary sources matter), ethics (authorized vs. unauthorized), and the moments that stick\u2014AA meetings on tour with Aerosmith, Michael Jackson editing <em data-start=\"787\" data-end=\"797\">Moonwalk<\/em> with Bubbles nearby, and Zeppelin lore that still follows him.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div class=\"readmore-hidden\"><b>Stephen Davis: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I was eight years old, a black car pulled up to the front of our house on Long Island and a man\u2014a priest\u2014got out, wearing a Roman collar and my mother answered the door and he said, \u201cMy name is [Father so-and-so], and I\u2019m from the local Episcopal church and the music teacher at your son Stephen\u2019s school says that he has the best voice in the school and we want him in the choir.\u201d And my mother said, \u201cOh,\u201d you know, \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019re not Episcopalian,\u201d and the priest said, \u201cAnd it pays $20 a month; two rehearsals and two services a week.\u201d And this is 1955 or \u201856 or something like that, and that\u2019s good money for a kid.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/><\/span><b>Pat Healy: Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of comic books and milkshakes. And so, for the next three years, I was a trained, professional chorister at the Episcopal Cathedral on Long Island, New York and I learned to sing, and learned to sing well with other people, and that began my lifelong love of music. <\/span><br \/><b>So, before that car pulled up, were you genuinely really excited about it anyway?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My father was a big music fan. And so, my mother would listen to the radio all day and my father collected jazz records, Miles Davis, I grew up with that stuff, and, you know, the more commercial side of \u201850\u2019s jazz. I didn\u2019t really get excited too much about music, per say, in terms of buying records until I was about 10 years old and the Kingston Trio came along, this is \u201858, \u201859, and I wanted to have all those records. I mean, they influenced everybody from Bob Dylan to Lindsey Buckingham to almost anybody who was alive then. And then the early \u201860\u2019s come around and Kennedy is . . . there\u2019s a bloody, public assassination and the nation\u2019s hopes are foundering and three months later, as if in response\u2014a call to summons!\u2014The Beatles show up on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Ed Sullivan Show <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and kind of changed everything. But I\u2019ve always thought, as someone who writes about music, I\u2019ve always thought that, in the long run, the advent of The Beatles won\u2019t be the main music that that era is remembered for because this was also when Brazilian music came north and bossa nova entered the American culture in \u201862, \u201863, \u201864, with these incredible records.<\/span><br \/><b>And were you getting into them at the time?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, totally.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They were all on the radio, my father was buying the records; jazz, samba, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Getz Au Go-Go<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Getz\/Gilberto<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Astrud Gilberto\u2019s solo records, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Luiz<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bonf\u00e1\u2019<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s records, I mean, we had them all in the house and I was like, as mesmerized by that music as I was by the advent of The Beatles. But anyway, I sang in high school, I went to Boston University.<\/span><br \/><b>And was writing also a throughline, as well as music?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, no.<\/span><br \/><b>No?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, not yet. I wasn\u2019t really a writer until I went to Boston University. Boston University was great because it was this giant place in the late \u201860\u2019s and it was . . . \u00a0I didn\u2019t really go to class because we went to demonstrations instead. I burned my draft card on the steps of the Arlington Street Church with about 100 of my friends.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And \u2026 about 1,000 people there that day, this is 1967 and at the same time, this is when all the San Francisco bands started coming to Boston and playing at the Boston Tea Party; The Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, The Holding Company, which was Janis Joplin\u2019s band.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And all these incredible . . . you know, [it was an] organic movement unto itself and you know, you hadn\u2019t really seen this before . . . families of bands from one town. And they came through and it was just mind boggling. At the same time, the bands were coming through from England, most notably, Led Zeppelin. Fleetwood Mac was the house band at the Boston Tea Party in 1968.<\/span><br \/><b>With these books that I\u2019ve read of yours, I can feel from the writings that you were there at a lot of those early ones, right?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was there, man.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And having fun.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And taking notes.<\/span><br \/><b>Were you taking notes?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, taking notes. I started writing for the college paper at Boston University, which was one of the largest circulation university papers in the country, and I started writing about music, mostly in order to get free tickets.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know? When The Doors came to town in the spring of \u201868, they played at the now demolished theater on Massachusetts Avenue, near Berklee, it\u2019s called the Fenway Theater and Jim Morrison came out in a peacoat and a hat, and this . . . tom-tom sort of war drum rhythm behind him and he started screaming and I thought to myself, \u201cMan, this is . . . \u00a0the energy I want to be around every day for the rest of my life.\u201d . . . \u00a0Because it was just incredible and . . . this was before people knew how to put on rock shows, but he had this instinctive thing of holding an audience of people his age . . . \u00a0just completely in the palm of his hand. In fact, I know, having written his biography, that when that audience moved on, and the audience turned into high school kids and junior high school kids, he didn\u2019t know what to do with them and that\u2019s when he quit The Doors and audiences were too young and they were just too dumb and crazy, and he said, \u201cMan, the stuff that\u2019s going on stage is amazing but the shit that\u2019s going down in the audience is unbelievable.\u201d<\/span><br \/><b>That is a funny thing and I feel like you do deal with that in a lot of your works, like in <\/b><b><i>Hammer of Gods <\/i><\/b><b>when you\u2019re talking about how Zeppelin was so frustrated that it was the original rock generation\u2019s younger brothers and sisters?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah . . . the older baby boomers weren\u2019t programmed to like Led Zeppelin. It just sounded like someone screaming, you know? <\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But man, my little brother! . . . The men don\u2019t know but the little brothers understand, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>So now, during this time you\u2019re writing about all of this music and you\u2019re starting to feel like that\u2019s something you can do as far as shows . . .<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I can do this, I can do this.<\/span><br \/><b>And were you also playing still? And singing?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No.<\/span><br \/><b>No? You dropped that?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I dropped out of singing and playing music until later. But in 1969, I wrote the first front page story of a new paper called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cambridge Phoenix<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which later became <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Phoenix<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which later became <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Phoenix<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><br \/><b>It was <\/b><b><i>The NewPaper<\/i><\/b><b> at one point, right? [Ed. Note: The interviewer was incorrectly thinking of the Providence, R.I.-based<\/b><b><i> NewPaper<\/i><\/b><b>]<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Real Paper<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. . . . It was a split off. I was there too, but the fact is that music was so big in Boston, it was such an important part of student life and just the people who lived here, that there was enough advertising from people selling stereos and amplifiers and guitars and tickets and anything related to music, that two competing weekly papers showed up in Boston. One was called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston After Dark<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BAD <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the other was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Phoenix <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and these were fat. We were publishing 80-, 90-page papers every week, and there were two of them. <\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. And were you writing for both?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No. I was writing for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. . . The Phoenix<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And then, we had a guy writing for us who, called Jon Landau, who was also a big music editor at <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and when he went to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">full-time, I became the music editor of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Phoenix<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and then I became the associate editor of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He hired me. . . . The only thing I have in common with Bruce Springsteen is that we were both invented by Jon Landau and so, that gave me, at age 22 or something like that, a national forum, because <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was kind of \u201cit,\u201d you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. And were you still in school then, or were you&#8230;?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No. I was living in Cambridge with my girlfriend and her dog and various photographer friends, in a, kind of a communal scene in Cambridgeport.<\/span><br \/><b>Were the rents really cheap at that point, or was Cambridge always Cambridge?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it was $180 a month for a whole house, a beautiful house near the B.U. bridge, it was great. . . . It was a very lucky time for us to be alive and doing that because . . . for a young writer like me, [there were] only a few things you could write about and make a living out of; one was politics, one was sports, and the other was music. Or you could go to Vietnam and be at war, of course. . . . But, you know, none of that stuff appealed to me except . . . writing about music, and hanging out with musicians, and smoking dope, and living that life, and going on tour with bands, and stuff like this.<\/span><br \/><b>So you burned your draft card and your number never got called?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I had a draft physical later on. And they said, \u201cWhere\u2019s your draft card, son?\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, I burned it on the steps of the Arlington Street Church.\u201d And they said, \u201cWell, step over there.\u201d And I also had a, you know, I mean, like many people . . . I knew a doctor who wrote a letter for me. And if you didn\u2019t want to go to Vietnam, you didn\u2019t really have to, you know? Unfortunately, 55,000 people didn\u2019t know that and [my friends and I] were talking about this the other day, a lot of people are not enjoying their grandchildren today because, you know, whoever started this. I blame JFK, but that\u2019s another story. . . . Anyway, music! I left <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">after a couple of years.<\/span><br \/><b>Did you like it there?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My job was to \u00a0. . . do the record review section. . . . And so I met all the other writers; they all had to come through me. And . . . me and Landau worked out of the New York office, not San Francisco. And I mostly worked out of home. So I never had anything to do with the office politics or anything. . . . I met Jann Wenner maybe once, you know? . . . But again, it gave me this national audience for my stuff, you know? At age 23, 24. . . . And so, when I left <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I started writing for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Times <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">about music: Front page stories on Sunday, you know? I had a friend called Robert Palmer, Bob Palmer, he was the chief music critic for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and he came back from a vacation in Morocco and he said, \u201cWell, you\u2019ve got to go to this village of the master musicians of Jajouka. These are a 2,000 year old rocking band.\u201d He actually said, \u201cThis is a 5,000-year-old rock \u2018n\u2019 roll band that was discovered by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones.\u201d And the first record on Rolling Stones Records was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan in Joujouka <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and [I go], \u201cWell, where is that?\u201d And he says, \u201cOh, it\u2019s in the hills south of Tangere.\u201d I go, \u201cOh, oh alright I have to go.\u201d He says, \u201cYou have to go. It\u2019ll completely change your life.\u201d So I wrote a proposal to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">National Geographic <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and they sent me and a photographer first class to Morocco, [we] hired a car and made our way into the reef and into the Gibala foothills and spent six months with the master musicians of Jajouka. And they taught me how to play music. <\/span><br \/><b>Really?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Flute, drums, everything. I was just immersed. . . . All they did was smoke kef and play music all day. . . . And then they would go to these festivals.<\/span><br \/><b>So how many people are we talking about?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, back then, there were 30 master musicians; 15 guys playing the rita, which is like a double reed oboe, and 15 guys playing the drums. And it was the 5,000-year-old rock and roll band. I mean, their music had . . . was descended from . . . you know . . . stuff that had come from Damascus, you know? When the Arabs moved west in the ninth century, and some of the rituals that they do recall Roman rights like the Lupercalia, where you dress up in goat skins and you whip the women for fertility.<\/span><br \/><b>Wow.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, this is pretty serious stuff. I wrote a book about it years called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jajouka Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> years later. But in any case, I came back; I left a writer and I came back a musician and that\u2019s what really changed my outlook on music and the commercialization in music and, you know, kind of what it was all about. <\/span><br \/><b>How did you communicate with them?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I took along a friend of mine, Bob Palmer, this writer who said, \u201cTake along this guy, he speaks fluent Arabic.\u201d I speak fluent French, the photographer spoke Spanish very well, so between the three languages, you know, we just, we got along real fine. But it was mostly the language of just music and, you know, I was in my twenties and most of these guys were in their . . . \u00a0fifties and sixties, and had fought with Franco . . . \u00a0in the Spanish Civil War. But it was just great and the food, the music, the people, the goats, everything. It was just one of these life-enhancing experience, and again, I came back a musician. . . . I came back able to play things on the guitar that I couldn\u2019t play before and it was magic; and, you know, just part of my legendarium. Around this time, reggae was hitting, so I went right off to Jamaica and started hanging out with Bob Marley, and that\u2019s where my first book comes from, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reggae Bloodlines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Not just Bob Marley, but the whole movement. It was 1974 or \u20185, and there was this cultural shock wave coming out of Jamaica; not only music, but politics, you know, a socialist prime minister, the CIA was down there . . . undermining him. There were food shortages, tanks in the streets, and meanwhile, Bob Marley\u2019s at home pumping out . . . this incredible . . . revolutionary music and Burning Spear and Jimmy Cliff and The Meditations, Heptones, so I got really into reggae.<\/span><br \/><b>Now did you know, coming off of the trip to Morocco and then going to Jamaica, did you know\u2014you knew that the first one was an amazing experience while you were in it\u2014but did you know when you were in it as soon as you got to Jamaica, that this was <\/b><b><i>something<\/i><\/b><b>, you know? <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My family has a long history with Jamaica. My grandmother used to go there when I was a kid, so I\u2019d heard a lot about it, you know? I\u2019m a big James Bond fan, so I\u2019d read Ian Fleming\u2019s books that take place in Jamaica. So I kind of was prepared . . . I had arranged a really nice house in Kingston. And we had a . . . \u00a0I neglected to say that the reason that we went there the first time was to write an article for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. . . . But this was seen by an editor at Doubleday<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and she gave me and my photographer friend, Peter Simon, a pretty good advance. So we were flush with cash, we went down to Jamaica, we stayed for months and again, we\u2019re hanging out with Bob Marley and his crew and Burning Spear and all these contemporary guys, driving around the island, going up to the mountains to visit the ganja farms, hanging out with prime minister Michael Manley because we had an assignment from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Times <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">magazine as well. But it was mostly just the music. But at the same time, reggae couldn\u2019t get played on the radio in Jamaica because the JBC\u2014the broadcasting company\u2014wanted to play like The Commodores, disco music. So there was this tension in Jamaica. In the early days, Bob Marley and his pal Skill Cole had to take cricket bats to the radio station and tell the DJs, \u201cIf I don\u2019t hear my record in an hour, we\u2019re going to work on your car.\u201d And a lot of windshields got smashed before Bob Marley got on the radio in Jamaica. So there was this . . . it wasn\u2019t a tourist paradise, you know? It was really a contentious . . . battlefield in Kingston.<\/span><br \/><b>Right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And you didn\u2019t want to be caught outside at night, necessarily and so it was pretty rough. But\u2026<\/span><br \/><b>Did they take you in?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, very much so, yeah! There were also people who were saying that we were there to steal their culture. But we didn\u2019t care . . . We were young and dumb, you know? And we could always just say, \u201cLook . . . \u00a0we can go back home and write about the commodores and make more money than we can writing this stuff, but we\u2019re giving you guys a platform.\u201d And of course, within two or three years, people started hearing reggae on TV commercials, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Wings was incorporating it, and everybody had to have their reggae song . . . <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everybody had a reggae song! Even Led Zeppelin tried to, had a crack at it, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>At this point you\u2019ve written <\/b><b><i>Reggae Bloodlines <\/i><\/b><b>and while you\u2019re down there, are you realizing,\u201cThis is my career! I can do this as a living!\u201d?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes. . . . Because I had an assignment for the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Time <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">magazine, and they published my interview with the prime minister, so I thought to myself, \u201cWell, I could always go back to . . . writing about current events or something if this reggae thing doesn\u2019t work out,\u201d but it did. And then after that, I did a book called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reggae International.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> After that, I started working with Bob Marley on his memoirs, interviewing him, and then he died. And I finished them by myself and around this time\u2014so this was in the early \u201880s\u2014and when Bob Marley died, I had a really good literary agent and he called me up and he said, \u201cLook, Bob Marley just died. I can get you . . . <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">this<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> much money for a biography.\u201d I said, \u201cThat\u2019s incredible, that\u2019s great.\u201d And he said, \u201cNot only that, but,\u201d at this time, there was only one rock book out there and it was called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No One Here Gets Out Alive <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and it was a terrible biography of Jim Morrison.<\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s like Sugerman?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Danny Sugerman and someone else, and the operating premise of this book was that Jim was still alive somewhere, waiting to return like Osiris or the Imam or whoever. So my agent said, \u201cLook, all these rock bands are going to have legends, and you\u2019re perfectly positioned to be the guy who writes these legends, I mean, for the rest of your career, you can write stories about these rocks bands.\u201d And I go, \u201cOkay, that\u2019s fine with me. Let\u2019s start with Bob Marley.\u201d And so I went back to Jamaica and started interviewing people and the book came out here and in England and then in Japan, and then in France and then all over the world. And that was it, that was my course, write the legends of these guys. The next one was, I went on tour with Led Zeppelin for a while and out of that came <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">you know, still in print 32 years later. And then I started getting calls, my agent started getting calls from people like Levon Helm and Mick Fleetwood and Michael Jackson to do . . . \u201cas told to\u201d or ghost-written books. . . So I did that for 10 years, then went back to writing about bands. \u00a0. . . \u00a0I did a biography of Jim Morrison, the Levon Helm book, which is called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This Wheel\u2019s on Fire, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Michael Jackson book was called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moonwalk<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, number one bestseller in the world.<\/span><br \/><b>You did that <\/b><b><i>with<\/i><\/b><b> him too, right?<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it was a ghost, I was the ghost writer. And a lot of fun. Mikey, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>You did have a good time?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I had a real good time and he was real nice to my family, too. Like I took my daughter there and at one point, he\u2014I had been interviewing Michael Jackson and every now and then\u2014the trainer brought in his monkey, he had this monkey called Bubbles, who\u2019s still alive, by the way.<\/span><br \/><b>Wow!<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He\u2019s retired in Florida. But he is still alive. And so my daughter came one day and I said, \u201cCan I bring Lily? She\u2019s seven years old, she\u2019d love to meet you.\u201d He said, \u201cOh yes, bring her. Okay, Steve, yes bring Lily.\u201d So, the next day, I show up with my wife and daughter and we have lunch and we watch . . . his favorite movie in his private screening room, which was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Kill a Mockingbird <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and Lily was sitting next to Michael, she looks over at him halfway through, tears are streaming down his cheeks and at the end of it, I said, \u201cMichael, you\u2019re so emotional about this movie, haven\u2019t you seen it?\u201d . . . \u00a0He said, \u201cI watch it almost every day, Steve!\u201d So, emboldened, I said, \u201cListen, Michael, is there any way that we could meet Bubbles?\u201d \u201cOkay, Steve,\u201d and he pushes a bell and about 10 minutes later, the trainer comes in with the chimpanzee and the chimpanzee didn\u2019t see many children, and so the chimpanzee grabs Lily . . . by the wrist, and starts to drag her out of the room. And Michael grabs her other wrist, and so Lily\u2019s the rope in this tug-of-war between him and Michael Jackson. And I look over at Lily and I notice her hand is turning blue because the monkey has this death grip around her wrist and I go, \u201cMichael, this thing with the monkey\u2019s getting a little . . . \u201d And Michael nods at the trainer, the trainer pulls out some kind of joy buzzer, puts it on the back of the monkey and it goes *boom* and the chimp goes like . . . <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[pantomimes unconsciousness]<\/span><\/i><br \/><b>And Bubbles is still alive!<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, Bubbles is, last time I checked, which was maybe 18 months ago. Bubbles is alive and retired.<\/span><br \/><b>Oh man. So, spending all this time . . . having done both the unauthorized and the authorized [biographies], did you ever do any authorized ones where you approached the artist?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No. . . . I tried . . . when the book I did with Levon Helm, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This Wheel\u2019s on Fire <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">came out, we sent the galley proofs to Bob Dylan and he wrote this incredible blurb; the first and only time he\u2019s ever blurbed for anything, I think. And it was just this . . . \u00a0it took up about half a page! That book\u2019s still printed, and we still use the blurb! And so, I wrote to . . . I was casting around what to do next and I wrote a letter to [Dylan\u2019s] manager . . . \u00a0saying, \u201cListen, I know Bob really liked this book and \u00a0. . . \u00a0there\u2019s a rumor that he\u2019s considering doing something like this and I just wanted to put my candidacy,\u201d and never heard back. But then a few years later, he wrote this book called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chronicles<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which is pretty much in the same register that I used for Levon Helm\u2019s voice, but from Minnesota rather than from Arkansas. So, I have never approached anybody . . . \u00a0And when I do get approached now, it\u2019s more for celebrities other than musicians. You know? Famous photographers, famous actors, and stuff like that, and I turn them down. We turned down, me and Peter Simon turned down Lady Gaga a couple of years ago because we just figured we were too old and we didn\u2019t want to go on the road with her. . . . It was a nice offer.<\/span><br \/><b>Well yeah, that brings up the next question, is it always a prerequisite that you\u2019re a fan of these musicians?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absolutely, yeah sure.<\/span><br \/><b>That you\u2019re going to have to be able to tolerate doing a year to three years to . . .<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I could have learned to love Gaga, I suppose . . . \u00a0but I didn\u2019t want to, you know? The only time that I took on an assignment like that was when I was approached by Duran Duran\u2019s management. And I didn\u2019t have much respect for Duran Duran at the time. This is like, maybe 10 years ago . . . long after their heyday. They were getting back together and they wanted to write a book. And then I started listening to Duran Duran and I realized that this was a pretty amazing product. And it was product too, it was music, but it was product. Then I went to England and did a little tour with them and I realized\u2014and I had never known\u2014what a great band they were live; incredible band live. And so I wrote a proposal, we got over $1 million advance and when it was time to sign the contract, and I had explained to them that the way I work with bands, like Aerosmith, was that I get half the advance and the musicians split the rest. Because, you know, someone\u2019s got to write the book! And it worked out pretty good with Aerosmith: they made a lot of money! The book was called <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Walk This Way. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so the Duran Duran book was going to be my next band book and when it was time to sign the contract, they said, \u201cWell, we\u2019re not splitting this. You can\u2019t have half the money. There\u2019s five of us and there\u2019s one of you, you can have . . .\u201d you know, and so I just walked away from it. . . . They kind of fired me, and just said, \u201cWe\u2019re not giving you what we said we were going to give you. . . . You\u2019re out.\u201d And that book never came out.<\/span><br \/><b>That would b a pretty interesting read.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it\u2019s on my list of what to do next, maybe, you know? I\u2019ve written, published 19 books now and, you know, there should be at least one more, you know? Did you notice that you\u2019re in [<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gold Dust Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">]?<\/span><br \/><b>I did! Thank you so much for that.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, thank you very much for going to all those shows.<\/span><br \/><b>Oh, it was a blast.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That was fun. You\u2019re very Rhiannon, you know . . . Whatever that means! You\u2019re indelibly immortalized as that, until you start writing your own books!<\/span><br \/><b>But it\u2019s funny, though, because around that time, like, all my friends were having kids and, you know, my job at the paper was a glamorous one where it was, \u201cHey, Pat Healy\u2019s got a plus one for me,\u201d you know? And then all my friends started having kids [and not being able to go to shows] and we met and it was like, \u201cHey, let\u2019s go to shows!\u201d We saw Wu-Tang, who else did we see?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lindsey Solo, which was very interesting. We saw Stevie at The Pavilion.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. And then saw the Fleetwood Mac reunion with Christine [McVie].<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I didn\u2019t see that.<\/span><br \/><b>No, we went to that together!<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I went by myself and reviewed it for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Metro<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><br \/><b>You went by yourself right after the marathon bombing . . . <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, \u201cBoston Strong,\u201d right! Oh, no, there\u2019s something, you\u2019re right!<\/span><br \/><b>\u2018Cause I was there till 2014 and I think we went in like the fall of 2014.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s exactly right. So yeah, there were more things than even I remembered. It\u2019s part of the research. So, thank you.<\/span><br \/><b>No problem. Yeah, with [the writing of each book] being such a long process, \u2018cause yeah, that was four years ago, that was the last time we saw them, I don\u2019t even know when we saw Stevie and Lindsey . . . <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. . . I saw Stevie a year ago at TD Banknorth Garden: Worst seats in the house, but I liked it because . . . it was then that I understood that there were four parts of her audience. There were old ladies her age, their daughters in their thirties and forties, their daughters between 12 and 16 or so, and then the gay guys who were actually dressed like Stevie. A lot of them.<\/span><br \/><b>Right, right. Did you ever go to the Land of a Thousand Stevies, or whatever it\u2019s called?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I like that though.<\/span><br \/><b>Night of a Thousand Stevies, right?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Night of a Thousand Stevies. I don\u2019t know if the Night of a thousand Stevies\u2014I haven\u2019t heard about it in some time\u2014I think it may be over. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, it\u2019s one of those things that, you know, as I\u2019ve come to live a certain amount of time, to watch audiences dissipate on age.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah.<\/span><br \/><b>And availability and I\u2019m guessing that the group who was doing it aged out of it and the torch was never passed or something.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right, exactly.<\/span><br \/><b>And it is a funny thing to realize \u2018cause, you know, when you\u2019re first going to shows, you don\u2019t really take stock of that, you\u2019re just there with a bunch of people.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mostly your age. You know? Or younger, not much older.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. So, when you\u2019re writing these books, like I was starting to say, I don\u2019t even know what year it was when we first saw Stevie, or first saw Lindsey, but it was like 2011 maybe? 2012? I don\u2019t know, but you spent . . . what\u2019s the longest you\u2019ve spent on any of these books?<\/b><br \/><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Gold Dust Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, five years.<\/span><br \/><b>It was five years? Okay.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, but my wife died in the middle of it. You know? But I kept researching, I kept doing all the research while she was ill. And that was like two years and after she passed, the people around me said, \u201cDon\u2019t write the book now.\u201d Let it marinate. Like whiskey . . . think about it for a year and don\u2019t try to write, you know, so I took a year off, lived on credit cards, [and a ] lot of support from my neighbors and family.<\/span><br \/><b>Your agents, too? Were they understanding?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, we tried to buy the book back from St. Martin\u2019s Press. I just said, \u201cYou know, we\u2019re not going to make the deadline, here\u2019s the advance back.\u201d A hefty advance, too. They said, \u201cNo, no, no, no.\u201d The timing worked out real good, actually, because I wrote the thing last year and it\u2019s just been published and it\u2019s selling real well . . . We\u2019ll know on Wednesday whether or not it hits the bestseller list. . . . That\u2019d be nice but if not then, you know, onto the next thing, whatever that may be.<\/span><br \/><b>Well, what<\/b><b><i> is<\/i><\/b><b> the next thing?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don\u2019t know. Maybe Boston. You know, \u201cMore Than a Feeling.\u201d Great story! The funny thing about Boston is that everyone that even approaches it gets sued. The principal of Boston is . . . \u00a0currently in court with the guitar player over some remark that the guitar player, you know, passed that apparently caused a gig to get cancelled or something like that and this was written about in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston Herald<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a couple of weeks ago. They did a thing about the Gold Dust Woman in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Globe. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And they said, \u201cWhat are you thinking about next?\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, maybe about Boston,\u201d you know? \u201cI\u2019ll probably get sued, but on the other hand, I\u2019ve never been sued before, at least it would be a new experience.\u201d So the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Globe <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hits . . . the front door about 6:00 in the morning. At 11:00 in the morning, I got . . . an email from a libel lawyer.<\/span><br \/><b>Wow.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It took five hours for a libel lawyer [to get in touch]. Now, fortunately, the libel lawyer was saying, \u201cI\u2019m the libel lawyer who represented <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boston Herald <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when the guy from Boston sued them, and not only did we win, but we got $170,000 in costs off of him. So, here\u2019s my card,\u201d basically.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good luck.<\/span><br \/><b>Right, right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good luck, son. But he also said that he\u2019d deposed everybody and if I was interested in the depositions, and I\u2019m going, \u201cYes!\u201d<\/span><br \/><b>Oh, wow.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYes, I\u2019m interested in the depositions!\u201d <\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s interesting.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But on the other hand, you know, maybe, you know, there are other ideas, you know? I mean, maybe a Duran Duran book would work. <\/span><br \/><b>Right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A book about the \u201880s. . . . People like reading about . . . \u00a0then . . . maybe there\u2019s another Led Zeppelin book, you know? Robert Plant since Led Zeppelin . . . I mean, that\u2019s a whole story and . . . he left Led Zeppelin in 1980, so that\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">most <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of his life and he puts out an album every couple of years.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. With all these books and spending all this time either with these people, physically, or immersing yourself in their music, which artist do you still find yourself going back to?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, I wish Bob Marley was still alive. He had a great laugh, you know? Anyone I worked with I enjoyed spending time with, some more than others. Obviously, Levon Helm was a gas. We went down to . . . he took me down to Arkansas on the bus and we, you know, went to his hometown, Turkey Scratch, Arkansas. Mick Fleetwood, you know, snorting cocaine in Malibu for a year . . . hanging out with Michael Jackson and his monkey, you know, I\u2019d go back to. . . . if I could see any of them tomorrow for lunch, I\u2019d be thrilled. Not so much Duran Duran, but then, I didn\u2019t really do that book, you know? Aerosmith, I went around the world with Aerosmith. I was like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">embedded <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. . . \u00a0Private jets, five-star hotels, and they were doing it sober! That\u2019s a great story . . . \u00a0You get to Tokyo and instead of, \u201cWhere are the hookers? Where\u2019s the drugs? Where\u2019s the booze?\u201d it was, \u201cWhere\u2019s the meeting?\u201d The AA meeting, you know? The first thing you do after you check into a hotel is you\u2019ll be in some church basement in Roppongi with the five guys in Aerosmith and, you know, a bunch of alcoholics. . . . You know, Western alcoholics . . . from the embassies and stuff like that and, you know, \u201cHi, I\u2019m Steven,\u201d \u201cHi, Steven,\u201d you know, so, I mean . . . Frankfurt, Germany, I went to AA meetings . . . \u00a0all over the world. Of course, that was a book about, you know, the Toxic Twins getting their lives back and making records again and it\u2019s . . . \u00a0the only redemption story that I\u2019ve written. Although Stevie Nicks, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gold Dust Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, in a way is, you know, she\u2019s been through rehab twice. She got her . . . she was a trainwreck that got her train back on track. Which is, thank God because, you know, it would have been a very dark story otherwise.<\/span><br \/><b>A lot of these stories do have darker sides and do you feel that as you\u2019ve gotten older and had more experience dealing with people and writing these people\u2019s stories, have you gotten kinder at all, or is it just that the subject material isn\u2019t as dark?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s a good question. The last two books have been about women artists.<\/span><br \/><b>Right, Carly Simon [was the subject of your previous book, <\/b><b><i>More Room In a Broken Heart<\/i><\/b><b>].<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Carly Simon and Stevie Nicks, and so, and you do get . . . some people get more compassionate as they get older. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s me or not. When your wife dies in your kitchen, you probably get to be a little bit more compassionate, like me, but . . . it just depends on the material. It really does, you know? Like . . . \u00a0and also, it\u2019s commercial; you\u2019re just not going to want to write a trashy book about Stevie Nicks \u2018cause her fans won\u2019t buy it. . . . \u00a0And there\u2019s no point.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But, you know, I\u2019d happily write a trashy book about . . . Duran Duran or Blackberry Smoke, or whoever, whatever band is in today. If it\u2019s a trashy story, you owe it to the reader to . . . partially acknowledge facts into a decent narrative and you don\u2019t have to go sleazy, you just have to tell what happened. . . . And you don\u2019t have to tart it up . . . the facts tell the story. <\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. Well you do also, throughout all the books that I\u2019ve read, you do put a little bit of yourself in there as well.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, yeah.<\/span><br \/><b>Whether it\u2019s your opinion of Kenny G. in the Stevie Nicks book . . . <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah.<\/span><br \/><b>Or, you know, then there\u2019s the <\/b><b><i>LZ-75<\/i><\/b><b> book where you\u2019ve got a whole narrative.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that was about me, right.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. So that was your most autobiographical work . . . <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The only one. The only one. And there was just a little bit about me, it was mostly about being on tour with Led Zeppelin. But it was how I got that story, you know? Which was kind of a fun thing, can be a fun thing to read.<\/span><br \/><b>Right, right. It\u2019s like <\/b><b><i>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead<\/i><\/b><b> or whatever.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Exactly, same kind of thing, you know? Just another look at it. Other than that, I try to . . . like the Aerosmith book, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Walk This Way<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I kept out of it completely. I\u2019m not in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I\u2019m not in Bob Marley, there\u2019s a section in the middle of the Stevie Nicks book called \u201cThe Writer.\u201d<\/span><br \/><b>Yes, I love that.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that\u2019s, that\u2019s where I break the narrative and I get the reader up close so you can smell the hairspray, you know? And see the thick glasses that she wears and . . . \u00a0just sort of up close and almost making contact with the subject. But it\u2019s not generally a good idea unless you have the material.<\/span><br \/><b>Right. <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And you want to try to avoid the suppositional stuff like, \u201cHe must have felt,\u201d or \u201cHe or she might have thought.\u201d That\u2019s like the kiss of death in these books. You know? You just want to stick to it, what you know and not try to. . . . \u00a0You can do it if it\u2019s an authorized book and they\u2019re telling you. But in an unauthorized book, it\u2019s a very bad way to make transitions, you know? <\/span><br \/><b>If somebody were to write your story, if not you, would you want it authorized or unauthorized?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Doesn\u2019t matter. . . . I wouldn\u2019t get in the writer\u2019s way unless I knew it was a hatchet job. In which case, I would try to have the author killed. Or maimed! Or get out the cricket bat and do the card, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, I\u2019d cooperate with anyone because . . . I mean, all of these books, these 19 books, each one is a chapter, you know? Some of the material is quite lurid. . . . I had to leave out [a lot]. I could write a book about this stuff that I had to leave out for legal reasons. On all these books. Not Stevie and Carly Simon, but the band books. . . . I mean, these guys weren\u2019t kidding around, you know? They came to play. . . . And play they did.<\/span><br \/><b>Was the Howdy-Doody book the only non-music book?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Howdy-Doody book was about, my father was the director, writer and director of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Howdy Doody Show<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. So that was a kind of history of early TV. And after <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I was sort of blown out about writing about a band and I wanted to do something else and write about my . . . it was basically, my father was sort of a writer who didn\u2019t write after he stopped writing for TV. So I basically got him to write the story of his time with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Howdy Doody Show<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, then I just re-typed it and with sort of my own stuff. And then, I went and interviewed the people he wrote about. And so, it was kind of a little collaboration there.<\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s great.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He didn\u2019t want his name on it, but I dedicated it to him which he liked.<\/span><br \/><b>He only passed a few years ago.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, he\u2019s alive.<\/span><br \/><b>Oh, he\u2019s alive? Oh my God. Is he 100?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My mother\u2019s 98 and my father\u2019s 100!<\/span><br \/><b>Wow. Oh, it was your uncle a few years ago.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My uncle . . . <\/span><br \/><b>In England.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well yeah, that\u2019s where we first talked. I was working on his estate and doing other things, yeah.<\/span><br \/><b>Right. So, thinking about <\/b><b><i>Hammer of the Gods<\/i><\/b><b>, and that was your first huge success, right?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bestseller. First of five.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. The Guns \u2018N\u2019 Roses one was there, right? <\/b><b><i>Fleetwood<\/i><\/b><b>.<\/b><br \/><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fleetwood<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was even longer. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Walk This Way <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was \u2026 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moonwalk <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was number one.<\/span><br \/><b>And this has a pretty good shot.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ll know on Wednesday, fingers crossed. You know, if it doesn\u2019t hit the list, it\u2019s still selling real good.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And kind of on to the next thing, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. Is that a nerve-wracking time period, when you are working on these books and you never can know for sure how they\u2019re going to do?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You never know. You never know. Sometimes, the book becomes an orphan. You\u2019re halfway through, your editor quits or gets fired, because only the editor who signs you up is going to see this book to press. For any other editor, it\u2019s just a burden.<\/span><br \/><b>Right. Right, unless it just, it sings, right?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unless the president of the company is on your side, which has happened to me, you know? But sometimes the company . . . the marketing director leaves the month before publication and then the new person doesn\u2019t have time to . . . it\u2019s just a crap shoot. It really is, it just, you know, the timing is everything but there\u2019s nothing the author can do about it, really.<\/span><br \/><b>Right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the Stevie Nicks book had come out two years ago, like it was supposed to, I don\u2019t know if it would have passed that \u201cwho cares\u201d test. She\u2019s a bigger star now than she was when we. . . \u00a0I mean she\u2019s like the fairy godmother of rock. So it\u2019s a good time to do this now and it\u2019s just fate, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Well, it is, it feels a lot like your career parallels the music industry, in a sense.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Rock is dead and so am I. Me too!<\/span><br \/><b>I was talking more about like the album cycle and the book cycle and kind of the way that . . . people are still reading. People are still listening to rock and roll, but it\u2019s just\u2026<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They\u2019re just not buying records. They\u2019re not going to shows as much as they did. I came of age when the music business was bigger than Hollywood. It was the biggest money component of American culture. It was bigger than publishing, bigger than theater, bigger than radio, bigger than anything. Individual bands were selling 30, 40 million records. It\u2019s a culture that doesn\u2019t exist anymore, you know?<\/span><b> . . . <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even vinyl made a comeback. It\u2019s all kind of cultic now, you know? . . . The fans are divided into niches. The rock world was the largest audience for anything in history, of the planet. Fleetwood Mac has sold over 120 million records, you know? There\u2019s some religions out there that aren\u2019t that big. So, I\u2019ve been privileged, from my early twenties to be narrowcasting into what is still the largest audience for anything in history and that\u2019s the rock audience.<\/span><br \/><b>Right. Well, it\u2019s interesting that you passed up the Gaga opportunity because that almost feels like it could have been the . . . \u00a0most contemporary person who is still attracting an audience based on a career.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">True. But if we had gone on that tour, we would have been disappointed because she collapsed halfway through. . . . She had hip surgery or something. . . . Also, she\u2019s too young to have a story, you know? You need a beginning, middle, and an end and, you know, she has a beginning, and now she\u2019s just coasting into the middle. But . . . if I\u2019m going to write a book, I want it to be an epic, you know? I want it to have a, you know, a sweep. And she doesn\u2019t have that sweep yet and again, Stevie Nicks may be the last rock star; certainly, the last female rock star. I mean, Taylor Swift is not a rock star. She\u2019s a pop star. And same with all her contemporaries. Will we see another, you know, another Debbie Harry, another Janis Joplin? A woman fronting a band and . . . nailing it, you know? I don\u2019t know.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where are they?<\/span><br \/><b>Do you read other rock books?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do blurbs for them. I pretend to read them and then write these outrageous, definitive, the real story, you know? I just do this as favors for editors, you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. There was a book last year called <\/b><b><i>Meet Me in the Bathroom<\/i><\/b><b>, it was all about\u2026<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The CBGB\u2019s or something?<\/span><br \/><b>No, it was like post&#8230;New York post CBGB\u2019s. Like at the turn of the century.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, right yeah. Did you read it?<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, it was pretty good.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The one I\u2019d really like to read is Jimmy Webb\u2019s memoir, which I hear is great. . . . I hear it\u2019s really, really, really, really good, you know? I have started several rock books. But, you know, a lot of them are written by academics now, you know? . . . Or people with PHD\u2019s and stuff like that. There\u2019s a new book about Joni Mitchell that\u2019s sort of . . . I\u2019m competing with now, written by a guy. \u00a0And I\u2019m quoted in it. Writing about from, you know, writing about Led Zeppelin\u2019s reaction to Joni Mitchell from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. That\u2019s sort of a funny feeling, you know? \u201cI\u2019m part of this?\u201d No, I\u2019ve never read . . . I can\u2019t think of another rock book that I read or, at least, that I read all the way through. <\/span><br \/><b>Right. <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s some I\u2019d like to read that haven\u2019t been written yet, you know? I\u2019d like to read a book about the real story of Debbie Harry and Blondie.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. Take a book like <\/b><b><i>Hammer of the Gods <\/i><\/b><b>and how much work do you do on that still when you have to do a new edition and\u2026?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, I have a mass . . . I clip everything, you know? . . . All of my books have, like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the fifth English edition is coming out&#8230;I\u2019m going to London, actually, to put this thing to bed with McMillan. And update . . . stuff.<\/span><br \/><b>Interesting.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other thing about <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is that it was supposed to be a mass market paperback in 1985 and at the last moment, the editor said, \u201cThis should be a hardback.\u201d Cut 10,000 words. So, it was 10,000 words cut out of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hammer of the Gods <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that could be put back someday because it\u2019s&#8230;backstory stuff about Jimmy Page. There was mostly&#8230;none of it was cut out for content, it was all just obsessive fan stuff. So, cut this out&#8230;and it came out as hardback at the last minute and hit the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bestseller list, the rest is my history. But, on the other hand, you could write a whole book about Robert Plant after he left Led Zeppelin.<\/span><br \/><b>But what do you do with somebody like Richard Cole, who has since said, \u201cOh, I was in a bad place. I shouldn\u2019t have told him all those things,\u201d or you know, people have said\u2026<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Nothing, you can\u2019t do anything about it.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, you just, \u201cHey, he told it to me.\u201d<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We paid him a lot of money to spill his guts. It was the only time I\u2019ve ever paid a source.<\/span><br \/><b>Oh, really?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yeah, he wouldn\u2019t&#8230;we paid him $5,000 which was good money in 1985. And we couldn\u2019t even use everything that he gave us. \u2018Cause of some of the stuff was really outre you know?<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And some of the stuff, he said, \u201cListen, the band got blamed for a lot of this stuff,\u201d but it was really The Who.<\/span><br \/><b>Really?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, and Richard Cole was one of the tour managers, so\u2026he just put Led Zeppelin through their pace. And remember, these guys were 19 years old. Robert and the drummer couldn\u2019t drink.<\/span><br \/><b>Right.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know? They couldn\u2019t go into the bars after the shows. . . . They\u2019d never seen a policeman with a gun, they\u2019d never seen a California groupie, you know, coming onto them, literally grabbing them. The first time I was in one of those hotel suites, I didn\u2019t put this in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LZ-75<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, damn me, but when I went to that hotel suite, I had this William Burroughs interview that Jimmy really wanted. And Richard Cole opened the door and he had a pair of girl\u2019s underpants on his head, lacey undies on his head. That was a book I wrote while I was researching the Carly Simon book. I wanted, you know . . . I\u2019ve written some books just \u2018cause I like to write every day and while you\u2019re researching in the morning, if you have a couple hours in the afternoon, I just retype my lost notebooks from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LZ-75<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The same thing has happened with the book about Morocco, about Jajouka, I did that while I was hanging out with Levon Helm in Woodstock, doing the research.<\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s cool. That\u2019s kind of like, there\u2019s this one scene where, I forget what it\u2019s from, but Brian Wilson . . . .no, it was Linda Ronstadt\u2019s talking about Brian Wilson, they\u2019re working on some composition and he\u2019s like trying to write this song and then he, to clear his mind, plays some Rachmaninoff Sweet, or something and just, he\u2019s like, \u201cOkay, now I got it,\u201d and he just goes back to the simple chords, it\u2019s just kind of, what is that Picasso quote, \u201cInspiration will find you working,\u201d that\u2019s Picasso, right?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don\u2019t know, I\u2019ve never heard that one.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, it\u2019s like [the gist of it is] if you\u2019re doing something, inspiration will come. You know?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that\u2019s true. <\/span><br \/><b>So what kind of things are you busying yourself with writing now?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019m just, right now I\u2019m just trying to get <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gold Dust Woman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Stevie Nicks biography out into the world. And then I\u2019ll forget about it and try to do something else. I did hear a good Brian Wilson story the other day, apropo of nothing. There\u2019s this guy called, from Boston area, called Andy Paley. I\u2019ll tell you this one actually, no it\u2019s alright, I can tell it. Long story short: Andy Paley is a local guy but he lives out in California now and about five or six years ago, Brian Wilson put out a different version of his <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smile <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">album, the old Beach Boys album and Andy Paley was hired to play keyboards. [On tour] and the last day of the tour was at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles and Brian Wilson was, after the show, he was backstage in his dressing room and the door was guarded and there were people trying to get in to see Brian because it was, you know, the hometown gig and he didn\u2019t want to see anybody, and so Andy comes in and he notices that one of the people who . . . are waiting, trying to get in to see Brian Wilson is Don Henley, the drummer from The Eagles. And so he goes into the dressing room and he goes, \u201cBrian,\u201d who\u2019s kind of dazed, you know. . . . He\u2019s sort of medicated and whatever . . . \u201cBrian, Don Henley from The Eagles is out here, he\u2019d like to meet you,\u201d and, \u201cWho is that? Don?\u201d \u201cYou know, he\u2019s from The Eagles.\u201d \u201cAlright, send him in.\u201d <\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s a good Brian Wilson impersonation . . .<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so Don Henley and his date come in and Don Henley\u2019s got a greatest hits album, yellow, gatefold Beach Boys, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Endless Summer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it\u2019s called.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, I love that one.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don Henley goes into this devotional five minute rap about how it influenced . . . recently came to California from Texas, was to follow the vibe of the Beach Boys and make it in the music business, the call of the surf and, you know, Brian\u2019s big influence, etc. Brian\u2019s like nodding off and he\u2019s getting bored and he\u2019s like, \u201cAlright, fella, give me the album,\u201d and he . . . Andy gets him a Sharpie and he goes, \u201cWhat\u2019s your name again? Don? To Don&#8230;thanks for all the great music. Love, Brian Wilson,\u201d and he hands the thing back and so Don&#8230;other people start coming in and Don and his date go over and stand against the wall, just to be in, you know, in the presence of the great master. After about ten minutes, Brian Wilson notices that the people in the dressing room seem much more interested in Don Henley, like in awe of this guy. [So Brian] calls Andy, \u201cWhat\u2019s that guy\u2019s name again?\u201d \u201cDon, it\u2019s Don Henley from The Eagles.\u201d \u201cOh . . . what of The Eagles?\u201d And so he\u2019s like, \u201cCome on, Brian! Like \u2018Witchy Woman\u2019 and \u2018One of These Nights\u2019 and, you know, \u2018Hotel California.\u2019\u201d Brian Wilson thinks for a minute and he goes, \u201cTell him to come back over here.\u201d So, Don Henley comes over, Brian\u2019s like, \u201cGive me that record! Where\u2019s the Sharpie?\u201d And he, Don Henley goes, \u201cOh, you gonna write something else, Brian?\u201d And Brian takes the sharpie and he crosses out \u201cgreat.\u201d And he hands the record back to Don Henley.<\/span><br \/><b>Wow. That is amazing. I love, though, that like, watching you tell that story, the way you light up telling it, I can tell, like, that it still gives you that something to convey these stories.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019re storytellers, man. You and me, that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah. It\u2019s great, it\u2019s great. <\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The best stories are the ones that . . . you can\u2019t print though. . . . You know? Like, you can\u2019t \u2026 there\u2019s no context for that, it\u2019s not even a story that works on\u2026would work on the page, you know? <\/span><br \/><b>Do a Mark Twain, then. Have it published 100 years after your death.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh yeah, the posthumous book: sell it now, but publish it later.<\/span><br \/><b>So, we began the interview talking kind of about you as a musician and you became a musician again after Morocco, and I see a guitar leaning against the television set, so are you still finding something in listening and playing?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, yeah. I play a lot of the music I learned in Morocco. <\/span><br \/><b>Yeah?<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the flute, just by myself, and the cats like it too.<\/span><br \/><b>That\u2019s cool. Yeah.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cats are like cobras. If you start playing, these sort of shepherds\u2019 tunes on the flutes, these are old, old tunes, man, they go back to the caveman stuff. And the cats come and they look at you, it\u2019s like, it\u2019s almost like the cats are going, \u201cHey,\u201d you know, \u201cthis cave isn\u2019t so bad after all, there\u2019s a fire and the guy\u2019s playing music,\u201d you know? <\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, \u201cthe guy.\u201d They don\u2019t know your name.<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yeah, \u201cthe can opener is playing music. And there\u2019s, you know, plenty of mice and rats around and chipmunks,\u201d you know? So yeah, it\u2019s, you know, it\u2019s a way to get back to the, you know, the very, very primal things. Here, I\u2019ll play you a tune.<\/span><br \/><b>Yeah, yeah!<\/b><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The master musicians, the flutemaker, made me a bunch of flutes. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[plays flute]<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/online.berklee.edu\/music-history-and-liberal-arts?campaign_id=7010Z000001ZkQgQAK&amp;pid=&amp;utm_source=takenote&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_campaign=bol-gen-takenote-link-from-article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">STUDY MUSIC HISTORY AT BERKLEE ONLINE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen Davis has written nearly 20 books about music, including the Led Zeppelin book, &#8220;Hammer of the Gods&#8221; and the brand new &#8220;Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9571,5],"tags":[212,213,240,595,628,811,819,911,914,1344,1353],"class_list":["post-10420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-history-and-liberal-arts-articles","category-podcast","tag-bob-dylan","tag-bob-marley","tag-brian-wilson","tag-gold-dust-woman","tag-hammer-of-the-gods","tag-led-zeppelin","tag-levon-helm","tag-michael-jackson","tag-mick-fleetwood","tag-stephen-davis","tag-stevie-nicks"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.8 (Yoast SEO v25.8) - 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