Interview with Rob Sheffield, Part One

The last time I interviewed music critic Rob Sheffield on this site, he had just released his excellent and heartbreaking memoir Love Is a Mix Tape. That book told the story of loving and eventually losing his first wife in the context of the music and mix tapes they shared. His second memoir, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, has just recently been released. Over the course of this week, I’ll be running a long discussion we had last week that touches on — among many other things! — the value of pop stars, “pro-girl” songs, the cultural power of MTV in the 80s and 90s, and what Rob calls the “First-Week One-Listen Piffle” school of music criticism. Here’s the first part of our talk. Enjoy, and stay tuned!

Matthew Perpetua: So I just mentioned to my friend that I was about to interview you, and he was like “oh, he wrote a book about Duran Duran, right?” and I had to explain that it’s more about how you learn to understand women through music, and also music through women. Is that about right?

Rob Sheffield: I’d say that’s right. I guess everybody has their way, when they’re growing up, of making sense of the world around them, and for me it came down to music and listening to cool girls talk about it.

Yesterday a friend sent me a YouTube link of the previous night’s Adam Lambert concert in Erie, PA, where he busted out T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy” for the first time ever. (What a perfect song for him!) And I loved how in every clip you could hear the fan holding the camera phone and her friends screaming “OMG” while he was singing–in a way, listening to the Glambert fans listen to Glambert was truer to the song than just listening to Glambert in a studio could ever be! Duran Duran is like that too.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, you need the experience of that hysteria to complete it. It’s like early Beatles!

Rob Sheffield: That’s true! The third Beatles album I ever owned was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl — a gift for my 12th birthday! — and I loved hearing all the screams along with the songs. That’s how I learned so many of those songs, and that’s probably why I continue to think “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” is an actually brilliant song.

In the zine Why Music Sucks Frank Kogan wrote about how early punk bands like the New York Dolls put so much feedback on their guitars because they were trying to replicate the sound of screaming Beatles girl fans! It made them feel more like rock stars to have that screaming buzz layered into their songs.

Matthew Perpetua: Ha, that’s a great theory.

Rob Sheffield: It’s kind of like what you said about Robyn. The audience becomes the main instrument of the show.

Matthew Perpetua: Have you seen her? She really knows how to make people go crazy. I get the sense that some people get kinda cynical, they don’t want an entertainer who knows how to get everyone going nuts. But when you’re talking about this stuff, that’s totally what it’s about, getting wrapped up in the moment and allowing yourself to cut loose with everyone else. There’s a pleasure in being in a room full of people agreeing that what you’re hearing is totally amazing, especially if it’s the kind of music that doesn’t get a lot of respect.

Rob Sheffield: Totally. I went to see Lady Gaga at Madison Square Garden a few weeks ago and it was one of those shows where she was just the microphone and the crowd was singing through her, if you know what I mean. She totally gets — as I think Robyn does — that people come because they want to hear themselves and their friends sing.

Matthew Perpetua: Right, well, specifically they understand girls and gay men.

Rob Sheffield: It’s funny because it reminded me of all-ages hardcore shows I used to go to in the early 80s, which were mostly other teenage boys, reacting to music in a very pop way, a very visceral and screamy way, very much into the moment.

Matthew Perpetua: Yeah, definitely. I remember going to see a lot of Guided By Voices shows, and those were kinda similar. But way more drunk.

Rob Sheffield: Did you go to arena pop shows growing up? When I went to my first one in 1983 — the Police, the Fixx and A Flock of Seagulls — it was exhilarating just being in a crowd that big who liked the same songs. I liked the songs too, but it was really different from just hearing them by myself.

Matthew Perpetua: I’ve never seen an arena pop show, only arena rock. My third show was Pearl Jam at an amphitheater, I saw U2 at Giants Stadium.

Rob Sheffield: I always did like those big arena shows. They used to be a lot cheaper! I went to see shows like Debbie Gibson and Bon Jovi in the late 80s but they were only around $20, so you could go and have a good time drinking in the megapop uplift vibes, but you could also talk your indie friends into coming along because it was cheap!

Matthew Perpetua: I like to see arena shows when I can. I probably see at least one per year at Madison Square Garden, which is actually a pretty decent venue and I have had a number of positive show experiences there. Much more so than some “cool” smaller venues, or totally awful places like Terminal 5. That is easily the worst place to see a show in New York City. I resent that I have to see a few shows there in the coming months. It drives me crazy that they keep booking dance-oriented acts at Terminal 5, a place where no one can dance.

Rob Sheffield: Bizarrely, I had a fight into JFK a couple weeks ago, and Sarah McLachlan was giving a free show at Jet Blue’s Terminal 5. I was thinking, even a show at the airport’s Terminal 5 is more fun than the other Terminal 5. Terminal 5 is not just a terrible venue — it isn’t even the best music venue in NYC to be called Terminal 5!