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This is later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

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hear weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Jim Sullivan spent twenty six years writing for

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The Boston Globe and then two more
decades writing for national publications. He's interviewed

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and reviewed countless musicians, some of
them multiple times, and we're talking the

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A listers. He's put it all
together in a book that is called Backstage

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and Beyond, Volume one, which
includes fascinating, entertaining, and occasionally here

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raising profiles. Forty five years Jim
has a lot of memories to comb through.

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There is a lot of memories to
comb through. When I was thinking

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about doing this book, the word
legacy was kind of dangled in front of

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me, and you know, I
thought, well, it's legacy is something

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that you have kind of when you're
dead, and I'm not so sure about

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that. But on the other hand, YEA, I will be dead at

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some point, so I guess it's
good to have a legacy. Again.

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There's there's a lot of good stuff
in here. There's a lot of good

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stories. They they flow sequentially to
a degree, but they're also broken up

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in chapters, and I like to
think of them as good toilet reading as

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well. By and large, did
you talk to these guys in person,

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backstage, over the phone, total
mix from dressing rooms to bars, to

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hotel rooms to phone interviews, limousines, you know, the full range of

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wherever one could talk to someone.
All of them done in the in the

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pre cell phonner era, none of
that stuff. And actually I'm trying to

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think probably pretty much in the pre
internet there this book anyway, there's there's

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a second volume coming in October.
This one deals with artists who started in

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the fifties and it goes pretty much
up to artists who started in the early

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mid seventies. The next book kicks
off after that, which is sort of

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a punk and post punk onward era. Did you focus on just one job,

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one music style or is it everything
now? Not at all? The

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idea? Yeah, as I said, we broke it up more by time

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frame. And in this book,
you've got the Kinks, Ray and Dave

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Davies, You've got Pete Townsend,
You've got lou Reid, You've got rock

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Tea music, Brian Ferry and Brian
Eno. You've got Mary and Faithful,

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Tina Turner, Darlene Love, Roy
Orbison, Richard Thompson. It's a wide

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range of musicians. I mean,
the only key in the thread, I

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suppose, if you will, is
that I had to like them and I

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had to have a rapport with them
that went just sort of beyond the obligatory

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rock in a twenty minute rock interview, we've gotten with newspaper guy, and

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for the most part, I think
we did that. I mean, there's

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some depth to these stories. I
don't pretend they are complete stories of the

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artist's life, but they're sort of
extended moments in time that I spent with

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them. You had to like them, Did they have to like you?

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Not necessary seraily, but I think
with a few exceptions. Ginger Baker didn't

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like me much, but he doesn't
like anybody, and I didn't take that

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personally. That was sort of a
contractual interview he had to do, and

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it was pulling teeth. I put
it in the book almost as a humor

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piece, because he is pretty funny. My attempts to get him to talk

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and his basically not even hearing what
I'm saying and yelling walk most of the

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time. So that was one where
no, no, there was no close

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relationship there that was just you know, we're both looking at our watches.

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I was going to end. But
by and large, yeah, I mean

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there were pretty deep relationships with both
of the Davy's brothers from the Kinks with

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moren Zevon, certainly with Richard Thompson
with Nico, and yeah, I think

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one of my strengths is getting on
the wavelength that the artist is on in

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trying to match that or understand that, and use humor when possible. That's

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always a good icebreaker and sort of
a good bond. If you share a

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similar sense of humor, chances are
you are going to get on pretty well.

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And you know, I didn't shine
away from tough questions either, but

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it was, you know, it
was I did my research. I went

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in knowing things and it wasn't just
a case of blindly stepping into the backstage

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area and what can you tell me
about your life? You know, I

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had some points I wanted to make, and I think the other key thing

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about doing these interviews was that you
listen to what they're saying and if they're

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going off on the tangent you didn't
expect, but it's really interesting follow that

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tangent and go with it. Get
some great stuff that way, and I

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think I did. Backstage and Beyond
Volume one is the book forty five Years

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of Classic Rock Chats and Rants from
Jim Sullivan, who ranted the most.

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I'm going to go go to Ginger
again on that. It was sort of

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a desultory rant, but he did. Jerry Lee Lewis also at times he

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did threaten to killing. It was
but I'm not going to flatter myself to

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say that I'm the only person he
threatened to kill. And also I believe

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he said he said it in a
joking manner. I really do believe that

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his idea was after a show,
he said, you better give me a

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damn good review, and if you
don't, you did, huh. And

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I kind of smiled and said,
I don't think he's going to kill and

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fluss ay good review. But yeah, yeah, he was. He was

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a ranter, and he was you
know, at times he was very reflective

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and was wondering about whether you go
to heaven or hell and you know all

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that, and at other times he
was just wild and said things I can't

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tell you on the radio, of
course, not I imagine there's a lot

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that you can't tell on the radio. But that's why it's good. That's

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all written down in Jim Sullivan's book
forty five Years of Classic Rock Chats and

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Rants. It's beyond Backstage and beyond
volume one. Yes, there's a volume

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two coming up, Jim. I've
had my share of this, certainly not

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to the degree that you have.
But have you ever been interviewing an artist

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and you realize, Wow, this
person is probably not gonna be around another

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couple of years. I'll give you
an example. I interviewed Benny Mardonas who

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had a hit single back in the
late seventies called Into the Night, and

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when I interviewed him, I was
like, this guy is so coked up,

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he can't last. He's going to
burn out, and he did.

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Not long after that. I thought
Nico would perhaps die in the not distant

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future. When I first interviewed her, she was still on heroin. As

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it turned out, no, the
second time I taught to her as she

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had kicked She looked a lot at
her she was healthy and somewhat ironically,

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I suppose she died bicycle accident or
possibly having a heart as attacking a bicycle.

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Some years later, so no,
she didn't end the way many of

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us thought she was going to end. Now, a lot of them damage

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their hearts early in their careers and
then later suffered from, you know,

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damage that they had done to their
heart. There is that, yeah,

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of course, right right, certainly
backstage and beyond Volume one forty five years

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of classic rock chats and rants,
Jim Sullivan has written about it. He's

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been a rock critic and journalist for
a long time, Boston Globe and many

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other national publications. It's also getting
back to the drugs thing. It seems

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like it was more prevalent later,
like the Roy Orbison's of the World and

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the Jerry Lee Lewis is the World. I'm sure it was there, but

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it doesn't seem to have affected them
as much as it did later artists.

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I think you're right. Jerry Lee's
main vice I think was the laker.

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Yeah, Roy don't think he had
any vices. And yeah, well,

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the indulgences of the sixties and seventies
kind of played out and there was the

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idea. Alice Cooper told me this
that he sort of opawned entering the rock

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world as he did. He sort
of thought drinking becoming becoming a drunk and

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just partying all the time was sort
of like the entry level requirement of being

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a rocca and the heat he learned
before. That took some time, but

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he learned that wasn't really what you
wanted to do, and also what you

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wanted to do is separate the on
stage alice from the off stage alice,

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which he managed to do quite well. Actually, Yeah, a lot of

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the artists that I've talked to that
are still going strong, I think realized

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that although they try to create this
image of sex, drugs and rock and

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roll, you'd go backstage and they'd
be drinking hot tea and warming up.

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You know. Yeah, yeah,
there is uh and I think yeah,

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I mean, I think honestly,
the the sex, drogs and rock and

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roll thing, I mean it's it
looks good on paper, and it's kind

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of a good fantasy. And yeah, some of them lived it out and

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some of them died by it.
But yeah, by and large, if

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you're planning on having any kind of
career, that's more of a short lived

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part of all the drugs part of
the way, it's a short lived part

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of your career, or else He's
just not going to have one as you

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as you will know, read all
about the careers of many of your favorites

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Beyond and Backstage and Beyond, Volume
one, forty five years of classic rock

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chats and rants from Jim Sullivan.
Thank you for sharing them. The reason

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for joining us today, Hey,
thank you, I appreciate him. Thanks

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for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember

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to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation