Music Journalist Gary Graff Interview
By: Ken Brzezinski |
Tuesday November 03, 2009 |
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music lover with a reporter's background |
| Award winning music journalist Gary Graff started his career in Detroit in 1982 after graduating from the University of Missouri. He contributes to some of music’s most noted and influential publications such as Billboard, the New York Times Features Syndicate, and Revolver. He is the founding editor of the “MusicHound Essential Album Guide” series and editor of "The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z." Gary is also a co-founder of the Detroit Music Awards Foundation and is the associate producer of the upcoming documentary "Let's Go Cobo!" But most recently, he released a book called “Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger…" First off, let’s talk about your new book chronicling the legendary Bob Seger… “Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger” is a book that I cooked up with Thomas Weschler, who’s a photographer and spent about 8 years on the Seger road crew mostly as a tour manager. He always kept his camera around and has a treasure trove of unpublished images which tell, as you can imagine, great stories about being on the road with Bob Segar during the time of Bob Seger’s ascent. We’re talking before Live Bullet and before Night Moves. Before he really became a big star. This is the mythic period when Bob Seger was playing 250 nights a year and just sluggin’ it out on the road. Eventually, these became the stories that you hear in the song “Turn The Page.” So, that’s what the book is about. You have these great pictures of a baby faced Bob Seger. Everyone knows the iconic “Bob Seger look” with the long hair and the beard and the moustache. This is (him) you know, clean shaven, “Beatles” haircut, just really great stuff. It’s a fans book. We also put in some other material. We have a couple of essays, we have a lot of factual material, a timeline, a full discography, there’s a foreword by John Mellencamp and an afterward by Kid Rock. It’s the first Seger book ever and it’s just a nice package. It's almost like a scrapbook in a way. Did you and Tom divvy up the writing duties, or did he strictly contribute photographs? The photos are Tom and the words are mine through talking to Tom and getting his story and turning those into the running text of the book. It’s really an anecdotal collection rather than a formal biography. This is an unauthorized book. Bob Seger and his people had nothing to do with it. We do have their sanction though. In fact, they are selling it on their website right now. His record company is also coming out with a new CD of old material and they are going to be marketing the book with that CD. We’re kind of in cahoots now, but we weren’t when the book was being published and written. What was your first Bob Seger experience? I have a good one! *laughs* I came to Detroit in 1982, right out of college, and it was around the time The Distance album was coming out. I was set up to do a feature story about the album and we got set up with the management company. I’d come in, listen to the album, and then after that, I’d talk to Bob. So I go to the offices, they put the album on, we’re in the middle of the first song and I hear a pounding up the stairs and there’s Bob in the doorway. He says “Hi, how ya doin’?” and promptly sits down in front of me at the desk and listens to the whole album with me. I’m sitting there the whole time thinking “Ooooh boy. I REALLY hope I like this.” Fortunately it was a good album and he and I hit it off well. To be 21 and to come into it really as a Bob Seger fan, more so than anyone who had interviewed him before, was quite an experience. How did you get started in journalism?  Well, I did a lot of things. Among them was being a sports writer. That was mostly when I was in college at the University of Missouri. When I came to Detroit, I was able to come here covering music. I’ve done other kinds of work too though. I’ve done investigative work, I’ve chased fire trucks, and gone to boring city council meetings. I actually noticed, and I know how geeky as it sounds, I used to write three paragraph stories for; it wasn’t even a news paper it was just a bunch of sheets stapled together. I used to write about the holidays, so there was something there. Then, I got to 9th grade biology and hated it, and there went my parents’ dreams of me being a Jewish doctor. So then I took a journalism class and whatever that latent love of writing was, it brought it out of me and there was no looking back. I’m fortunate; I was able to go to college with a career path already in my head. For a music journalist and sometimes a critic, you seem to have a very even keel when it comes to giving an opinion on a show or an album. Have you always been so level headed? You know, it's that I have a real journalism and reporter's background. I approach my reviewing as a reporter. I investigate and I delve in. So whether it’s an album or a concert, I bring a real “reporter” attitude to it. The best review you can write is where you state your opinion, but the reader looks at it and thinks the opposite. They can say “Oh well he didn’t like it, but from what he’s saying, I think I would.” We can call it “fair,” but I just think of it as “depth." It’s not just putting my opinion out there, which you used to be able to get away with in music. But now, when people have so much immediate access to music and concerts via You Tube, you have to be able to tell the people what it is they DIDN’T see. You have to be able to bring perspective to bring depth. That’s what I think you might interpret as being a little more low key. It’s just being more informative. There is a little more thesis to it, not just my opinion. Let’s talk a little bit about the life of a music journalist. What are the upsides and the downsides of the job? Well, I’m sittin' here lookin' at the upsides if you could see my office and the stacks of CDs next to me. That’s an up and I guess a downside depending which one of us in the house you’re talking to. The woman I’m living with considers it a downside. I think it an upside. *laughs* The upside is obviously having a front row seat, or even a behind the scenes seat, to what you love and to understand music in a way you really wouldn’t otherwise. The downside of it, of course, is having to go to an occasional Miley Cyrus concert or the occasional show of that ilk. I’ve also been doing this a long time. It’s hard for me to sit in a movie and just enjoy the movie. My critical reel is always rolling. I am in this permanent and perpetual state of being a critic. But if that’s the worst, I’ll take it! Are there any concert stories you’d like to share? Oh boy...I’ve been lucky to have attended some great and historic shows. There was Live Aid in Philadelphia in 1985, the first Farm Aid back in 1985, the opening of the (Michael) Jackson tour in 1984, any number of Bruce Springsteen shows, and any of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. These were ones they did BEFORE they began televising them, so they ended in these great jam sessions that people have only seen in highlights packages. I went up to Chicago to see U2 for the opening night on the North American leg. Seeing my stepsons dance on stage with Michael Jackson in 1988. I’m sure if I had known then what I know NOW, I don’t know if I would have let it happen. But it’s been 25+ years of this so, yeah there have been tons of great live experiences. There's more than enough to counter the Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, or the Britney Spears shows I’ve had to go to. Do traditional record stores have a snowballs chance in hell of surviving in today’s day and age? The independent record stores, with all respect to the big boxes, are the best way to do music shopping just like the best way to do book shopping is through these mom and pop independents, because that’s where the passion is. It’s where you can go where shopping for art and it’s an experience as opposed to going into a place that also sells a dozen eggs. In the classic Ramone’s song “Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio”, Joey sings “we need change and we need it fast, before rock’s just part of the past, 'cause lately it all sounds the same to me.” How much of these kinds of statements “Well music was better in my day” and “Now a days, this new music sucks.” is a function of age, and how much of it is a function of the music actually being bad? 90% of it is a function of age, 10% of it is a function not necessarily of the music being bad, but music coming into a world where there’s already a lot of music that came before it. So it’s hard now. I mean there only are a certain number of notes in the octave and there only are a certain number of chords in a scale, and there is a finite number of ways to arrange them. So when you have 30, 40, 50 years of rock n roll or pop music in front of you, it makes it that much harder to do something that’s fresh and new and inventive. So what I hear is a lot of versions of the same old same old. I always felt that if I walked around the Warped Tour with a blindfold on, I’d think that I was listening to the same band for 12 hours in some cases. And that doesn’t mean the music is BAD, it’s just that it’s not that new and original because it’s really hard to be new and original now. That being said, I have no trouble finding new music to like. So that’s where the 90% age comes in. People just stop listening to music and I think for a lot of people who like to say “Music was better in my day”, it’s a defense mechanism so they don’t have to say they’re getting older. They can say “Music isn’t getting any better” not “Oh I have kids now, I have a tougher job, I have more to do, I don’t have as much time to spend listening to music.” I’m lucky; I have all the time in the world to spend listening to music. So I can say that yeah there is a lot of really good new music around, you just have to be able to find it. Because the one thing that the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s had, was a more limited playing field, there were fewer bands, and there were fewer outlets to hear these bands. There was radio, there was some limited TV, and occasionally in magazines. There was no internet, there was no youtube, there was none of the things that are bringing all of the music in the world to our fingertips. So the discovery of a great band back in 1973 was a whole different ball game than finding a great band in 2009. And that made it a little more special; you connected a little deeper with the band. What do you think of Metallica? Oh, I am a HUGE Metallica fan. I remember seeing them in the day when they were doing clubs on the first go around. And even then, it just like, “Oh my god!” I had been a Ramones fan and had seen the dawn of the Ramones, and there was a real parallel to looking at Metallica and thinking these guys will go anywhere and it’s just pure, brutal force. And I actually liked the different styles they tried. The only album of theirs that I didn’t like was St. Anger. My problem with that album was that the songs weren’t there. It was a bunch of riffing. And the sound of the album was that good either. I put on the DVD that came with the album, which is the songs being performed live, it’s like THERES THE SOUND!! But the songs weren’t there on St. Anger. But the problem with Metallica is when you take these five, six, or whatever years between albums, and you come out with one that is below the standard, it’s a problem. I mean if you’ve been waiting for a long time for this music, and they’re not coming back for another 6 years, and this is what you have to live off of, it becomes an issue. But artists have every right to swing to those extremes. I mean it’s an interesting discussion point. What we tend to forget is that it’s THEIR music, it’s not OUR music. We have the choice to consume it or not. But it’s THEIR music. The artist has a right to create whatever they want as long as they are willing to deal with the consequences of whatever they make. You’ve said in other media outlets that you are a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen and a fan of the album Born to Run. What do you think makes that album so good? Born to Run has an interesting place with me. Call it superstitious, but every time I go on a road trip, I make sure that album is in the car. And now my daughter knows it, so when we go on a road trip she says “You got Born to Run with ya?” And when she goes on her own road trips, because she’s 20 now, she takes it with her. It’s not an overlong album for starters. It’s only about 40 minutes or there about. You know, every song on it is great and it has such a wide sound scheme. It’s very “Spectorian” as in “Phil Spector”, ya know? When you listen to “Thunder Road”, “Backstreets”, or “Jungleland”, “Born to Run”, or “Meeting Across The River”; these are little aural films, that have all the grandeur of watching a great movie. So you can listen to that album and just get sucked into it. |
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