Catching Up with Rock ’n’ Roll Journalist Anthony DeCurtis The classic scenario portrays disappointing one-year academic appointment at an inexperienced young Emory University in Atlanta. Midwesterner moving to New Despite some lean times, he wound up York City, getting schooled becoming one of the pre-eminent journalists in in the ways of the larger the country covering rock ’n’ roll and popular world, and transforming from music — something he never imagined, not even well-meaning innocent to in his own, private fantasy land. “Meeting all of sophisticated success. the people I’ve met is pretty wild. The ones that Music journalist Anthony were the trippiest to try to deal with were the ones DeCurtis, 64, flips the script. who made a big impact on me when I was a kid,” Anthony DeCurtis. He grew up in New York City’s West Village he says. “Getting to meet and interview George Courtesy photo when it was known as Little Bohemia and earned Harrison or Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger or his bachelor’s degree from Hunter College, an Keith Richards or Pete Townshend or Ray Davies. affiliate of the City University of New York. I mean really. No one could imagine doing that.” He likes to quip that he’d never been west of In addition to big stories and interviews, New Jersey before he made the bold move of DeCurtis has a Grammy Award for Best Album applying to Indiana University in 1974 to pursue Notes and has written several books, including a Ph.D. in American literature and residency in co-writing the legendary music impresario a Midwest he regarded to be so unlike New York Clive Davis’ autobiography, The Soundtrack as to be exotic. of My Life (Simon & Schuster). He’s currently Long replanted in his native New York City, working feverishly to finish a biography of Lou DeCurtis acknowledges that he comes back to Reed, the late singer and songwriter for The Bloomington as often as he can. Just give him a Velvet Underground. “He was a complicated guy,” reason. The most recent, in November, was being DeCurtis says. “In many ways, he owed his career selected for the IU College Luminaries program, to journalists, because it wasn’t the general public which seeks to connect students with the that supported The Velvet Underground. I think a College of Arts and Sciences’ “most influential, part of him resented that.” successful, and inspiring alumni.” DeCurtis also serves as a distinguished “My critical sensibilities were formed here. I lecturer in creative writing at the University really feel like I use what I learned here really every of Pennsylvania, which puts him back in the day,” the author and longtime contributing editor to world he thought he’d inhabit when he first came Rolling Stone says. “I feel like I grew up here.” to IU. “I always tell students you can’t predict DeCurtis came to IU with the goal of becoming where your career will go. I’ve always thought a college professor. But during the last year of that my journalism was kind of like splitting the his doctoral program, from late 1978 to August difference with my academic training,” he says. 1979, he wrote album reviews for Bloomington’s “I’ve been able to take the critical skills I learned Herald-Times (then The Herald-Telephone) and at IU and apply them to subjects that millions of pursued music journalism in earnest after a people love.” *

78 Bloom | December 2015/January 2016 | magbloom.com