[www.calendarlive.com]

Enjoy!

Ross

hilburn writes well. but all these interviews sound just about identical - Keith's cute one-liners always turn out to be "canned responses" to pre-scripted questions. boring.

thanks Ross!
nice read.


"What do you want - what?!"
- Keith

Great to read....Thanks so much Ross.

ROCKMAN

Also cool Mick/Keith interview here

[extratv.warnerbros.com]

Ya gotta laugh at Keith talking about going on the road with the Stones

"Ill show ya things that you've never seen...like red Indians that look like Japanese...haaaaaarrrrhaha"

ROCKMAN

I never understand where these writers (& Hilburn's been around the block) get these truisms - I mean the RS' lyrics have always had a strong vulnerable streak - Exile, w/impotence as recurring metephor, just one example - & have referred to mortality/ageing for years. And they sure talked up B2B.

I've been reading Robert Hilburn in the LA Times since '71, and while he often gets it dead right, I think he's full of crap most of the time.

The Times attitude about the Stones has been generally dismissive over the last 30 years, but ol' Bob almost never goes on record himself.

His biggest trick is being The Rock Star's Best Pal. When a major group puts out a lesser work, he farms out the job out to one of the underling critics. He didn't do the dirty work of reviewing Dirty Work.

I always felt that a band of the Stones' stature ought to be written about by their No. 1 guy. But if he reviewed the bombs, they might not invite him to one of their out of town junkets.

Very true, as Jann Wenner (R Stone editor in chief) found out in '78. I think he assigned SG first to Dave Marsh, who has always seemed to loathe the Stones - his bits in the old ('76 & '80) RS record guide were truly stupid, & not just re the RS - so Wenner went back & re-reviewed the album himself. BTW Robert Christgau (along w/ Bangs, Marcus, & Tosches, a fine critic who kow-tows to no one) gave DW an "A" (w/ insightful comments) in his 80s Consumer Guide, which made me revisit & get into the album - 4 years after I bought it....

Christgau is certainly his own man. I believe he was the guy who panned Sgt. Pepper, saying it would lead to a lot of pretentious excess. And he was right about that.

It was weird in '78 when Rolling Stone gave a thumbs down to Some Girls--especially since they had given high marks to some of the previous LPs that were of dubious quality. From their point of view, there was nothing to "come back" from!

DW has it's moments--but The Times view of the album and them was nothing but contempt. I had a letter published telling the writers that if they really didn't care about the Stones anymore, they should just forward any future press kits, review copies, tickets, backstage passes, etc., to me!