Paul Nelson’s ‘White Whales’

A recent article in The New Yorker wondered aloud if music criticism has lost its edge.

In this current age of Anthony Fantano and the pivot to YouTube as a means of expressing one’s takes on the latest trends in popular music, it’s understandable for esteemed writer Kelefa Sanneh to question the state of its existence in the modern era through the course of his piece.

But if you are one of those folks who subscribe to the Substacks of the writers you were raised on, you already know rock criticism is still alive and well — it’s just not on paper as much as it once was. Yet to Sanneh’s point, its presence on the main stage of popular culture has waned considerably from the days when a half-star review in Rolling Stone could kill a career.

So let’s be thankful then, yes, that we have folks like author Kevin Avery who write books that remind us of the time when literary titans like Paul Nelson roamed the pulp landscape.

I Like People That Can’t Sing is Avery’s second book on Nelson, focusing on a pair of previously unpublished interviews he did with his dream subjects: Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams. He encountered both artists at a time in their careers when they were at odds with their respective record labels and when the alt-rock explosion was on the cusp of reaching critical mass.

It’s an incredibly insightful book that serves as a love letter of sorts to the art of the artist interview, and offers new insight on not only Leonard and Lucinda as subjects but Nelson as an interviewer as well.

Rock & Roll Globe caught up with Avery to talk about I Like People That Can’t Sing, which is out now on Fantagraphics Books. Yes, the guys who brought you your favorite Peanuts and Popeye anthologies.

 

How did you connect with Fantagraphics and how far do you go back with them as a reader?

Actually, Adam Parfrey (may he rest in peace) of Feral House was slated to be the publisher of my first book, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, but he had to bow out due to financial problems. At that point, my friend Jeff Wong — who in addition to being old friends with Paul, did the cover artwork for all four of my books and designed three of them — Jeff had a longstanding relationship with Gary Groth, co-founder and publisher of Fantagraphics. He put me in touch with Gary, and we hit it off. He’s published all my books except for one since 2011.

What initially piqued your interest in Paul Nelson all those years ago?

I began reading Paul’s music reviews and articles in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice when I was a teenager growing up in Salt Lake City. I read all of the rock writers of the day — Greil Marcus, Dave Marsh, Kit Rachlis and Jay Cocks, to name just a few — but there was something literary and beautiful about Paul’s writing that kept drawing me back to him. Imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway as record reviewers, and you get the idea.

 

How does this book serve as a follow-up to your last book about Mr. Nelson?

Both books concentrate on a specific period in Paul’s life. It’s All One Case: The Illustrated Ross Macdonald Archives, written with Jeff Wong, focuses on a several-week period in the summer of 1976 when Paul interviewed the renowned detective novelist at his home in Santa Barbara. In addition to over 40 hours of interviews, the book includes over a thousand images of manuscripts, letters and magazine and book covers from Jeff’s personal archive of Ross Macdonald memorabilia.

 

What was it about these two interviews, in particular, that encouraged you to make them the focal subject for this book?

These two interviews were conducted by Paul late in his career, in 1991. They were arranged for Paul by a couple rock critic friends who wanted nothing more than to give him an opportunity to write about a pair of his favorite recording artists. The story of how these interviews ultimately became Paul’s white whale is compelling enough, but the interviews, with Leonard Cohen and Lucinda Williams, deserved to be published. Not only because of the wealth of information they each shared with Paul about their particular life stories and their pursuit of their art and their dealings with their record companies, but how they dealt with Paul and his particular style of interviewing.

 

VIDEO: Leonard Cohen “The Future”

What are your personal thoughts on the music Leonard Cohen was creating during the time Nelson interviewed him? Are you a fan of The Future, which Cohen was likely working on at the time of this interview?

Not only am I a fan of The Future, I appreciate all of Leonard Cohen’s albums as parts of an ever-evolving, greater whole. If I had to pick a sentimental favorite, though, I’d choose 1977’s strange alliance with producer Phil Spector, Death of a Ladies’ Man. It’s the most “un-Leonard Cohen” of the singer-songwriter’s albums. As Paul wrote about it in Rolling Stone (not coincidentally, one of his best reviews): “It’s either greatly flawed or great and flawed — and I’m betting on the latter.”

 

What are your thoughts on Lucinda Williams’ Sweet Old World?

Only recently I came to the conclusion that it’s my favorite of her albums. Although it’s an early work, it’s her most accomplished. The singing, the songwriting, the music — it’s as if it’s all effortless, which of course it isn’t.

 

AUDIO: Lucinda Williams “Sweet Old World”

How did you connect with Suzanne Vega to write the intro for the book?

I had interviewed her for my first book about Paul because he’d written a sprawling article about her in 1991 for Musician magazine. Even though they got along swimmingly, his interpretations of her songs were, to her amusement, almost always wrong. But when the article came out, she sent him a note saying how much she liked it, and that it had made her cry.

When it came time to choose someone to write a foreword for the new book, Suzanne seemed the natural choice. She must have thought so, too, because she immediately accepted my invitation. She’d survived Paul’s particular brand of several-day-long interview sessions, and she had her own personal history with Leonard Cohen, which he and Paul discuss in the interviews.

 

Do you think a music journalist like Paul Nelson could succeed in the current climate of the profession?

I’m so far removed from the current climate of the profession, I don’t feel qualified to answer this. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty sure there are no music journalists like Paul Nelson out there. He was one of a kind. We were lucky to have him as long as we did.