What's New Podcast Transcript Season 4, Episode 8, Interviewing
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
What’s New Podcast Transcript Season 4, Episode 8: : Interviewing Pop Stars February 2, 2020 Host: Dan Cohen, Dean of Libraries and Vice Provost for Information Collaboration at Northeastern University. Guest: Larry Katz, Music Journalist. Host: Dan Cohen (00:07): From jazz and the blues to rock and R&B, popular music has been a cultural touchstone of the last century. And we as listeners can't help but wonder, "What is it like to be up there on that stage playing for thousands of fans. And behind the scenes, what is it like to make hit records and deal with the often unethical music business?" Today on What's New, the life of the pop star. Host: Dan Cohen (00:42): I'm Dan Cohen, and this is the What's New Podcast. Welcome back. I'm joined today by a former reporter and editor at the Boston Herald, Larry Katz, who for decades interviewed some of the biggest names in pop music and some of the sonic innovators who are now largely forgotten. Those interviews were condensed for the paper. But now, thanks to an exciting donation of the tapes of his original interviews to my library at Northeastern University, we have access to a tremendous trove of musical history. Welcome to the program, Larry. Larry Katz (01:15): Hi, great to be here. Host: Dan Cohen (01:16): I am so excited to have you on as a pop music fan and a fan of arts, journalism, music journalism. And actually, if we could start there before we get to the pop stars. I think our audience would like to know, I'd like to know how you were lucky enough to get this gig as an arts reporter starting in 1980 when incredibly you were one of the last people to interview Bob Marley. You attended an intimate performance for 30 people by B.B. King and then were able to talk to him about his life. And then just meet up with Aretha Franklin and Paul McCartney and so many others. How did this transpire? Larry Katz (01:54): Well, it really was accidental in many ways. In 1979, I moved from New York City, which is where I grew up and I came up to Boston. I had been a professional musician and I was at a kind of crossroads in my life. I had come off the road after spending the better part of the year touring with a bus and truck company production of The Sound of Music all over the United States. And that kind of made me think, "Geez, maybe I don't want to spend the rest of my life 1 on a bus traveling around the country. As wonderful as it was and in fact, I was making more money at that time than I had ever made in my life. Larry Katz (02:43): But somehow I felt that maybe there was something else I should be doing. I had some of my best friends were all living in the Boston area, so I came up here and I really didn't know what I was going to be doing with myself. I was of going to graduate school in psychology maybe, but I didn't know. And one of my oldest friends became the arts editor of The Real Paper. For those not familiar with The Real Paper, it was one of Boston's two alternative weeklies at that time along with The Boston Phoenix. Larry Katz (03:22): And so, my friend who was the arts editor was looking for someone to write about classical music. I was a graduate of Manhattan School of Music and I should say I was a bass player and I did know about classical music. I had a pretty substantial background and I was always interested in writing. And I said, "Well, sure, I'll give it a try. What the heck?" And I was unemployed. So he said I would get money, which sounded good. So I went out and I interviewed a chamber music group called the Armstrong Quartet, long disbanded. It had some I think a couple of the guys in the group were from the Boston Symphony. It was very exciting for me. I made $75 for this piece, although I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Larry Katz (04:26): Long story short, with my friend, a kindly editor, the piece actually appeared in The Real Paper in January of 1980. And it was, he said, "Do another one" and it kind of went from there. I was writing about classical music as I said, but one thing I quickly found out was that very few people these days are all that interested in classical music. So I didn't have a huge readership and the opportunity came along to write about other people in the arts. And I said, "Sure." Because personally as much as I love classical music, I loved all kinds of music. Larry Katz (05:12): So I think it was in may of that year. I remember I interviewed Dizzy Gillespie who was receiving an honorary degree from Tufts University, and we sat in the sun porch of the president of Tufts home on the Tufts campus. And I was pretty much pinching myself because I couldn't believe that sitting a few feet away from me was Dizzy Gillespie, who was a legend. And hereafter when it was over, I said to myself, "Wow." As a bass player, my chances of playing with Dizzy Gillespie were remote. And yet, here I was sitting with him and it was kind of on an equal level let's say [crosstalk 00:06:07] I wasn't a fan. I was someone doing a job and it was wonderful. And I spoke to so many interesting people in that short period of time. Larry Katz (06:20): In September of that year, I got to interview Bob Marley who was one of my heroes, as well as a hero to so many other people. And yet again, there it was. So I guess a lot of it was, I loved 2 music so very, very much and the opportunity to talk with these people and to ask them essentially whatever I wanted, it was just fantastic and it kind of just all flowed from there. Host: Dan Cohen (06:51): It struck me looking at your interviews that you actually brought your musical knowledge to the interviews, that it did in fact help that you were a practicing musician, and really were literate across the musical spectrum from classical and jazz to country and R&B and rock. Did that sort of help you during your career to have that kind of strong musical knowledge that you could bring into the interviews that you had? Larry Katz (07:18): Absolutely. When I was first given the opportunity to write about music, I had no experience as a professional writer whatsoever, but I had for as long as I can remember been very interested in musical criticism. So I read voraciously and I was often bothered when I would read a critic who clearly didn't know what they were talking about, because they didn't have any musical training or they lacked experience. Larry Katz (07:56): And so, I thought, "Well, geez, even though I don't have much knowledge about writing, I've got a lot of knowledge about music and the experience of being a musician." And that was kind of what I thought would allow me to get away with doing this. And I figured if I could figure out the writing part of it, I pretty much had the music part of it under control. Host: Dan Cohen (08:24): Right. So take us into that room in the case of Bob Marley, airport hotel room or B.B. King, a small bookshelf lined room at Harvard. You're there with your notepad and your tape recorder, which will lead to the tapes that we'll talk about later that you have so graciously donated to Archives at Northeastern. What is it like? I mean, you sit down with these people, can you identify some common spark or attitude or gift in these musical geniuses, someone like Dizzy Gillespie that you just frequently could see in their eyes or in the way they spoke about their work? Larry Katz (09:06): Well, very often, I mean, these people that you just mentioned, they are musical geniuses. I mean, that is the common thread that unites them. I mean, what goes into the creation of a musical genius? Well, certainly I think that there is some innate ability that they're born with, it's in their DNA and it emerges. And that my empathy or my admiration of that ability really made me want to talk to them about music. So particularly later on when I spent the bulk of my career writing for The Boston Herald, of course, a lot of entertainment writing is celebrity- driven. Does the reader want to hear about musical technicalities? No. The reader wants to know about their personal life or a mix thereof. Larry Katz (10:15): 3 It was my responsibility to my employer to write a nice juicy article that we'd get the widest readership. So I would not ignore the subject's personal life, but I also took a certain amount of pride in trying to get into the music in a less than superficial way, which wasn't always possible to do so, but if I could, fantastic.