Neil Strauss is rock journalism royalty. He’s a Rolling Stone Contributing Editor, writer for The New York Times, and best-selling co-author of autobiographies with Mötley Crüe, Jenna Jameson, and Marilyn Manson. He and Dave Navarro documented a year in Navarro’s life, and he’s won awards for his exclusive profile of Eric Clapton and his coverage of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. However, he may be most well-known as the author of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, the definitive manual for the aspiring pickup artist.
Strauss just completed a book tour for Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead: Journeys Into Fame and Madness, a collection of memoirs culled from years of observing celebrity excess during countless interviews. He was kind enough to chat with me for a few minutes about some especially memorable moments, the new book, and gaming celebrities.
You’ve interviewed Mötley Crüe, Snoop Dog, Eric Clapton, Britney Spears, Jenna Jameson… What is your most memorable celebrity moment — awkward, poignant — just whatever moment will always remain with you.
Oh, I don’t know. You know, I’ve got so many memorable ones. It’s like so many little bits, it’s like such a montage of, you know, shopping for Pampers with Snoop Dogg, or Courtney Love trying to get me to snort Kurt Cobain’s ashes, or sitting around talking about sex with Chuck Berry, getting a drink in the back of the bar with Bruce Springsteen, sitting on the tour bus with Lady Gaga, sitting in the hot tub with Marilyn Manson… All of these moments are just like a crazy montage, so it’s hard to pick out one that’s the most memorable.
Probably the most memorable one would be when one guy I was interviewing tried to have me arrested. For some reason it always stands out! [chuckling] That’s definitely the craziest. Yeah, it was this guy Ernie K-Doe, he had a #1 R&B hit in the late ‘50s, and I went down to his bar to interview him, and after the interview he did this little performance in the bar. Of course I had my tape recorder out, and he thought I was bootlegging the show.
He stopped the whole concert, trapped everybody in the club, trying to get the tape from me. But it was at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, so I’d recorded all kinds of other interviews from the Jazz Fest on the tape. I didn’t want to lose all those interviews, so I told him I’d play the tape to prove that it wasn’t a recording of the show, but he and his wife wanted to call the police, and tried to get The New York Times’ photographer’s photos back, and my tape back.
I felt so bad for him because obviously we were trying to help him with you know, a nice story in The New York Times… It was probably the first time they had interviewed him in forever, and it was you know, heart-breaking. I ended up writing the story anyway and making it nice cause I just felt bad. I understood what he was going through; I didn’t take it personally. He was probably ripped off by a lot of white men in the past, and probably that’s how he’s wired to see things.
If you could trade lives with one person in your books for one day, whom would you choose?
That’s a good question… Um… Let me think. Just for one day? I’d probably go with John Hartford, who’s a bluegrass fiddle player, and… he had found out that he had cancer and just had two years left to live. And he had chosen to be at his house and play the fiddle and just try to get better at the fiddle… Of all the people I’ve met, he was the most happy. You know, he was the most satisfied with what he was doing, he made his choice. It was also that he had made his peace with life, and was in a good place, and it was profoundly moving.
You knew that this question was coming because you’re the best-selling author of The Game. On your blog, you talk about how the rules of The Game help you to establish rapport during your interviews. Which celebrity was the hardest to game?
I didn’t always use The Game with everybody. If we got along great, I didn’t really have to use it. No one was particularly hard, once we started doing it. I found that celebrities are easier to use The Game on than regular people because they’re really sheltered and really in a bubble, and if someone is saying something interesting to them and not talking to them about their careers or trying to use them, it’s a fascinating, exciting thing for them. I found that once I did it that they were all kind of into these little fun psychological exercises and games that taught them something about themselves.
Whom would you want to interview you?… I know that Howard Stern just interviewed you and vice-versa.
Yeah, he would be the one to interview me. Let’s see, I’m trying to think of who I think is a great interviewer. I really think that Howard Stern is the best interviewer there is, but I don’t know if I’d want him to interview me again. [laughs] He’s so good that he gets it, he gets you to say things that you don’t want to say, and that’s a great interviewer. So, maybe it’s better to be interviewed by the worst interviewer in the world than the best interviewer in the world.
How is this book different from the others?
It’s the most different than any of the others. The other books I’ve done were specific journeys with specific goals in mind. The rock books I’ve done were kind of like one person’s deep, personal autobiography, and this one is really about thirty years of my life, but it’s not about me. You know, it’s like thirty years of my life spent being a chameleon in other people’s lives.
I guess it’s different because you have to do more of the work yourself [as a reader]. There’s a bunch of ideas, and there are probably more ideas altogether than any other book because you’re meeting so many different people, and you’re going to so many different worlds. You know, you’re going from Iraq to France to Algeria, you’re talking and meeting five-year olds to men in their nineties with strokes. It’s about life and death and ambition and abuse and the paranormal and everything in between. But you have to do more of the work yourself putting together the lessons. I put some of the lessons in the back, but it’s more of an experiential read than someone holding your hand and dragging you through a story.
Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead is available at a bookstore near you. Read thirty years worth of the wildest moments in rock journalism.
