Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
Speaker 2: Jim Sullivan has spent twenty six years writing about music
Speaker 2: for the Boston Globe. His works also appeared in USA Today, Boston,
Speaker 2: Harold Trouser Press, The Boston Phoenix. I thought the Globe
Speaker 2: and the Phoenix were competitors, Jim Sullivan.
Speaker 3: There they were. The Phoenix went down in the mid
Speaker 3: twenty fifteens, I think it was. I wrote for the
Speaker 3: Globe from seventy nine to two thousand and five. I
Speaker 3: left then and after that I did some freelancing for
Speaker 3: other outlets. So yes, I became a competitor of my
Speaker 3: old workplace.
Speaker 2: Oh there was a joke that went around and if
Speaker 2: you well, did you read it, then the Phoenix will
Speaker 2: know it was in the Phoenix. That's why I didn't
Speaker 2: read it. It had been in the Globe, I would
Speaker 2: have read it. Maybe you've heard that bandid about.
Speaker 3: I will say this, well, just quickly. One good thing
Speaker 3: about Phoenix was I think because they had some very
Speaker 3: good writers. I think it pushed us at the Globe
Speaker 3: to be better and to write more. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: and to cover more things that were off the beaten trent.
Speaker 3: And you know, it was a good competitive relationship there.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, even when I was with
Speaker 3: the Globe, I played with the Phoenix softball team, so
Speaker 3: you know there was a lot, a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of camaraderie out there.
Speaker 2: Well, Jim Sellivan's written a new book, and I love
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. The backstage and beyond complete forty
Speaker 2: five years of rock chats and rants, and it is
Speaker 2: out now everywhere where you get books. You've put together
Speaker 2: all of these conversations you've had with many of these
Speaker 2: artists over the years, and I imagine it must have
Speaker 2: been difficult to narrow down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. I mean there's I think there's seventy
Speaker 3: two chapters all told in this ebook that just you know,
Speaker 3: out an expanded version of the first two volumes, and
Speaker 3: you know there are outtakes. I mean there's a Pink
Speaker 3: Floyd chapter that I didn't write yet, could have. There's
Speaker 3: an Ram chapter haven't done yet. And when I was
Speaker 3: thinking about adding things, it was sort of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: who haven't I done that? I want to get in here. Well,
Speaker 3: Ringo was one of them the time I spent with him,
Speaker 3: Kiss Stevie Wonder, the Rascals, Judy Collins, Enya Rayuchi, Sakamoto suicide,
Speaker 3: you know, there were you know. So it was like
Speaker 3: once I got done the the first two, the hardcover books,
Speaker 3: it was like and we were doing the e book,
Speaker 3: my publisher, editor Ira Robins, said, you know, I do
Speaker 3: you want to add anything? And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we can do that, can't we? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: let me do it. So yeah, I spent a month
Speaker 3: or so and you know, made those choices and there
Speaker 3: could be more to go.
Speaker 2: Any of these people when you were sitting down to
Speaker 2: talk to them where they were reluctant to speak. You
Speaker 2: don't have to name names, but I mean I know
Speaker 2: what it's like to be on a press junket with
Speaker 2: with some of these people and they're like some of
Speaker 2: them are really into it and really understand the role
Speaker 2: that it plays, and some of them just could care less.
Speaker 3: No, none of these really were press junkets. I mean,
Speaker 3: these are all one on one situations. And I think
Speaker 3: what happened was, I mean I did this for quite
Speaker 3: some time and with a lot of these people, established
Speaker 3: a connection maybe early on at a level of trust,
Speaker 3: and as you can see in the book, these things
Speaker 3: are more conversations than they are interviews, I guess. I
Speaker 3: mean there are interviews obviously, and they've done for a purpose,
Speaker 3: and they're transactional, no question about it. But we get
Speaker 3: into things. I did so with Bowie, I did so
Speaker 3: with Bryan Ferry, Robert Fripp, you know, where I'd throw
Speaker 3: something out, they throw something back, and sometimes it would
Speaker 3: go off track in terms of not just talking about
Speaker 3: their music or their ways album or tour, but into
Speaker 3: something very interesting that both of us would pursue. And
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the strengths of the book
Speaker 3: is that there are stories here that are not just
Speaker 3: what you would read in a maybe a standard kind
Speaker 3: of QA with a rock star, if you will.
Speaker 2: Jim Sullivan's backstage and beyond complete forty five years of
Speaker 2: rock chats and so this is complete. Was there is
Speaker 2: this a more complete version than a previous version?
Speaker 3: Well, it just means this. There were two books that
Speaker 3: came out last year, Volume one, Volume two roughly divided
Speaker 3: into eras, and this was the opportunity to add to it, basically,
Speaker 3: to give if you will, more value for money for
Speaker 3: the e book and uh, you know, I had more material.
Speaker 3: And for the reason I stopped the first time was,
Speaker 3: you know, I and I were talking about this and
Speaker 3: he said, my god, well you've written some great stuff here,
Speaker 3: but it's so big it's kind of like a doorstop.
Speaker 3: So we broke it off into two books, and you know,
Speaker 3: at one point he said, okay, we probably got to
Speaker 3: stop now because it's getting, you know, getting to be big,
Speaker 3: and we did. And then it was because it's an
Speaker 3: e book here with the added chapters, you know, that's
Speaker 3: not a limitation how big it is. And I just said, well,
Speaker 3: I've got more great stuff. I'm going to go for it.
Speaker 3: I've got a Ringo star sitting here that we haven't
Speaker 3: got into. And that was fun. I had done what
Speaker 3: was really a fairly brief interview with Ringo, but I
Speaker 3: expanded that to talk. I raised the question with Ringo
Speaker 3: a lot of For many years, people considered him the
Speaker 3: lucky beetle. He was only an average drummer, and Ringo's
Speaker 3: and never averaged him. No, not average, and I kind
Speaker 3: of asked a lot of other drummers about Ringo's talent
Speaker 3: as a drummer. Chris Franz I know was in there
Speaker 3: from talking heads, and they were very good about explaining
Speaker 3: how good Ringo was with what he did, and that
Speaker 3: to me was fascinating. I mean it's, you know, the
Speaker 3: inner workings of what other musicians think about Ringo stuff.
Speaker 2: And you have lots of other stories. Were a lot
Speaker 2: of these stories already electronically transformed. You have to go
Speaker 2: back to some of your notebooks.
Speaker 3: Oh, I went back to notes previous stories. I reworked
Speaker 3: a lot of things that had shown up in certain
Speaker 3: other forms, you know, in brief maybe or just not yeah,
Speaker 3: just not as complete as what you'd have here. And
Speaker 3: I think what I did too for these books is
Speaker 3: admittedly I put myself in the stories more than I
Speaker 3: would have as a journalist writing for a newspaper and magazine,
Speaker 3: because there were a lot of interpersonal relationships, and I
Speaker 3: think part of what I wanted to do was to
Speaker 3: show how those relationships developed, how the conversations worked, and
Speaker 3: how I made some of the choices I made to
Speaker 3: ask or not ask things. I remember when I had
Speaker 3: dinner with Tina Turner and was doing a story about
Speaker 3: her life and what was ahead of her. You know,
Speaker 3: I made the conscious choice not to ask about the
Speaker 3: iconteena days because it had been covered so many times
Speaker 3: and so well, and I didn't want to drag her
Speaker 3: back into that. So that's an omission in the chapter.
Speaker 3: And it's fine. You can see you can read or
Speaker 3: see plenty about that. And you know, that was just
Speaker 3: one of the you know, sort of writer's choices about
Speaker 3: things to do or not do, and that was what
Speaker 3: I did not do. Well.
Speaker 2: I was about to say, a lot of these are
Speaker 2: no longer with us, and there may be words that
Speaker 2: they say in these conversations that nobody's heard before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, there there are. I think I mean this,
Speaker 3: I think there's some pretty great insight into you know,
Speaker 3: it was a time, you know, when artists were more
Speaker 3: free about what they wanted to say. I think that's
Speaker 3: tightened up considerably over the years. I think artists have
Speaker 3: more handlers, they had more PRP. I was fortunate. I
Speaker 3: mean I got a lot of you know, backstage access
Speaker 3: and a lot of free wheeling back and forth, sometimes
Speaker 3: with a glass of booze two for them for me. Uh.
Speaker 3: And you know there was a casualness to it that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was professional certainly, I'm writing, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no question that this is not just a fan conversation.
Speaker 3: I mean I have a certain agenda. But you know
Speaker 3: it was it was not scripted, and it was not
Speaker 3: limited to time, and a lot of it happened sort
Speaker 3: of impromptu after the gig. Do you have time, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: come back. And you know some good things come out of.
Speaker 2: That backstage and beyond. Jim Sullivan is the author and
Speaker 2: the book is out now. Everywhere you get to e books,
Speaker 2: it's electronic books and uh, lots and lots of writing.
Speaker 2: You must have had one hell of a warehouse to
Speaker 2: keep all these notebooks.
Speaker 3: Uh. The basement is full of the note the computer,
Speaker 3: the computer. I mean, let's face it, a lot of
Speaker 3: them were bounced over to the computer, so that made
Speaker 3: life a little easier than ferreting through the basement notebooks.
Speaker 3: But they were used to and uh, you know, I
Speaker 3: kind of wish I'd been a little bit more orderly
Speaker 3: about what I kept and where I kept them. But
Speaker 3: I dug out what I needed to dig out.
Speaker 2: Was there one? Was there?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 2: Was there? One? Big surprise? When you were putting all
Speaker 2: this together.
Speaker 4: Trying to think, I guess talking to I don't know.
Speaker 4: I picked Motorhead for an example.
Speaker 3: I guess no surprise exactly, but I've sort of forgotten
Speaker 3: about all exchanges we've had over the years, me and Lemmy,
Speaker 3: and you know, they were just you know, to kind
Speaker 3: of put them end to end and saying, yes, here,
Speaker 3: here we were at this situation, in that situation, and
Speaker 3: stringing them all together and putting you know, a complete
Speaker 3: package together what Motorhead and Leming mean to the world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that was kind of fun to go. Yeah, we
Speaker 3: had some depth there, and you know, there may be
Speaker 3: the perception among Motorhead and Lemmy that he wasn't that right,
Speaker 3: and he was. He was terrific. He was sharp, he
Speaker 3: was witty, he was terrific. And you know, sometimes people
Speaker 3: think bands like Motorhead, heavy rock bands, whatever you want
Speaker 3: to call him, you know, not the brightest lights on
Speaker 3: the planet. But Lenny really was. He was a joy
Speaker 3: to be with and just funnyest.
Speaker 2: Health And it will be a joy and funny as
Speaker 2: hell read for you, especially if you love this backstage
Speaker 2: stuff like I do. Jim Sullivan's Backstage and Beyond available
Speaker 2: everywhere you get your ebooks, and we thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us.
Speaker 3: Jim, thank you. I appreciate the time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
Speaker 1: weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation