ARTIST INTERVIEW: CREEM's Jaan Uhelszki

Jaan Uhelszki

An Interview with CREEM's Jaan Uhelszki 

CREEM is “America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine,” and pioneering journalist Jaan Uhelszki continues to be the best they’ve got. As one of its founding editors, she is boundlessly brilliant. Uhelszki is a personal hero of mine, cutting through the noise and taking up space in a boys’ club. I had the opportunity to chat with her about fake IDs, astrology, secret-keeping, and her inimitable late colleague, Lester Bangs. The Lester Bangs Issue, which pays tribute to the legendary writer, is out now. You can purchase it here.

MF: I'm really excited about this. I know that you worked as a Coca-Cola girl in Detroit when you were young, and used your fake ID to get that job. I used my fake ID this year to get into the CREEM showcase at South by Southwest. So, I think it's all coming full circle. I'm 19 now. And, if I'm correct, you were 19 when you started working for CREEM.

JU: That's right. And you know, you just have to do it on the fly. Only good things happen to the brave. 

When you’re doing it on the fly, you've got to fail a few times. For the first thing I ever wrote for CREEM, they sent me to review an Elton John show. I remember comparing his voice to warm oatmeal, and Lester just laughed me out of there.

It took me a year to get the courage to write something again, but you know, you just do it. Your mistakes are just as important. When people used to say that to me, I'd go, “Oh, they so aren't,” but they really are, and they make good stories later. I have a friend who says to embrace the suck when bad things happen in an interview. You put it into your story, and it humanizes it.

Everybody has this fear of falling on their face, especially if you're a rock journalist and you're interviewing your heroes. It's like you want to be as cool as they are. You know what? They’re not cool as we are! If you scratch the surface of those really nice pants and those really expensive haircuts, they're just like you and I. That's the big takeaway from it. Embracing the suck is a really good way to go.

MF: I really appreciate the way that you deal with people and not rock stars. Nowadays, journalists seem a little afraid to criticize in the face of fandom and stan culture. Do you ever think journalism will return to truth in the age of social media? 

JU: Yeah, I do think that the pendulum always swings. You wonder why there isn't a bigger backlash for someone like Taylor Swift because she's so ubiquitous. It's like she's almost too big to make fun of. But I think the sign of real affection and much better stories is if you're not worshiping at their altar and blowing kisses. You really need to just see what's there. I'm not sure it's so much criticism. I mean, with my big Detroit mouth, I have said things to artists that I really wish I hadn’t. I remember telling Jimmy Page, the God of the guitar, “Well, you're not playing as good as you used to.” It's like, what? But you know, now it's about asking them questions as if you were sitting next to them on a plane, and you didn't have your sunglasses off and on, and you were trying not to avoid them.

If you treat people like that, then you get better stories. It really is about treating them like a human. They have their problems too. They have insecurities as well, and they want to be reinforced. So, they're really not gods on Mount Olympus. Except a few are. A few are just wired that way.

MF: CREEM was originally built on personality and snark. It has definitely evolved, but the new issues possess that same energy. How do you, as an editor, maintain that legacy? Why are those qualities important to you?

JU: I think we reinforce each other. I came back for quality control - to make sure that the new CREEM was like the old CREEM. At first, it evolved into that. It's a sense of humor. It's like looking at things from a side angle, not straight on, and looking for the humor or the absurdity in something, and emphasizing that. Pushing a musician a little further, or trying to do things that are a little left of center. I just did this piece on Devendra Banhart. He has this new album called Flying Wig, so we took him to a wig shop on Hollywood Boulevard. We're always looking for high concept things - to put people in situations that they're not always in and see how they act. Then you see a different side of them. I think what was key about old CREEM and new CREEM is that we're always out there like war correspondents, screwing around with the rockstars, so you get to see them in that light. I always just think of us as emissaries, as an extension of the people who read us, so we can fact-find for you. 

MF: I'm going to take you back to your days in the subscriptions department, selling t-shirts before you acted as an editor. How would you sell my generation on physical media? What makes a print magazine so special?

JU: Well, I'm not sure I'm a good salesperson. But any magazine that you hold in your hands and you look at and you can rip out the pictures and put them on your wall or you can take quotes and stick them on your computer is a good thing because I've always felt that magazines teach you how to be cool, how to live, how to feel part of something.

CREEM is a tribe. And you're either part of the tribe or you’re not - it's up to you. I think if you read it online, you forget where your bookmarks are. You don't always go back to the same one, but with the magazine, you keep it in the bathroom or you keep it on your desk.

For me, it really does represent a family spirit, a spirit of belonging, a spirit of being a planet in this constellation. It's really cool to be here because you see things you don't see in other places. 

MF: What has changed the most about CREEM since the 70s? What has stayed the same?

JU: On the first staff that I was part of at CREEM, we didn't know what we were doing. We had no background in journalism, really. And so, in making mistakes, we created something pretty terrific, unusual, and different from what other people were doing, because we just didn't know. We just kind of riffed off of each other all the time. It was like an ensemble cast. Everybody was an important cog in that wheel.

I think this time around, the people who we have are real pros. They have a crazy sense of humor. If there’s any criteria to work at CREEM, I think it's that you see things in a funny way, and you see humor where most people don't. There's this absurdity, so that's the same. People like Fred Pessaro, Mandy Brownholtz, and Zachary Lipez are all a little nutty. They don't belong in regular workplaces.

I worked for Rolling Stone for a while, and I always felt like a messy raggedy ann there. You can't really tell anybody at CREEM to do something because then they'll do the opposite. That's exactly the same. It's just that they came as pros. They have great degrees, and they wrote for Vice and the New York Times. So that's really the one thing that's majorly different. They're a little more qualified than we were. 

MF: You continue to interview and profile artists. Are musicians still assholes?

JU: Well, they're always assholes, but you have to use that against them. It's like martial arts. You want them to be assholes because then you can write a better story. If they're nice and polite and too good to be true, what are you going to write about? So, I look for those cracks. The cracks are so much more interesting.

I think they're always the same. I think it requires a big healthy dose of narcissism. It has to always be about you in order to do this and give up everything else. Give up solid relationships. Give up a home life. There's so much involved in it, and they make the choice. It's a personality type. There are certain people who are attracted to being accountants and certain people who want to be lead singers, and they're different grades of asshole-ism.

It depends on what your instrument is, too. The lead singer and the drummer are always the biggest assholes. With bass players, you don't know what they're thinking. They're withholders. Lead guitar players can go either two ways. They're more expressive with their instrument, and they’re often really good cooks. They're also really arty, so a lot of lead guitarists tend to paint. There's all these other breakdowns. But, you know, that's why they call it lead singer disease.

MF: Everyone says never meet your heroes. Who is someone who proved that adage, and who is someone that was worth meeting? 

I'm going to preface this with, I need one rock star that I don't need because I've been disappointed a lot of times.

MF: I’ve heard it’s Mick Jagger.

JU: It's Mick Jagger, and I've never interviewed him. I don't want to destroy it. I had an old boyfriend who would tell me stories because he was on tour with them and I'd go, “don't tell me. I'm not going to believe them.” I have to keep him separate. In my heart, he's my rock star. 

You know, while Jimmy Page was kind of a jerk and made me talk to an interpreter, I respected him for not breaking character. So I wasn't disappointed. I think I just don't expect them to be particularly affable. Here's a real secret… all music journalists know this. You do better stories with people you don't like because you don't soft pedal the questions.

You don't care whether they like you or not. When you care if they like you, forget it. Like Moe Tucker, the drummer for Velvet Underground. I loved the Velvet Underground when I interviewed her. I was really bedazzled, and I rarely am. And she was really nice, but she said to me, “Why don't you ask me some harder questions?” I felt so caught. So I guess she would qualify for the one who really surprised me. 

Also, Lou Reed was really nice to me all the time. Jonathan Richman is one of the biggest Velvet Underground fans, and Reed used to go over to his house when he lived in Boston. He said, “When you interview Lou Reed, call him Mr. Reed.” And I go, “Oh, I just can't do that. That's just corny.” He goes, “I swear it'll pay off.” So I thought, what do I have to lose? And I did it. It was an amazing interview, and all subsequent ones were just as good. He was a dream. 

Again, I like to embrace the suck. John Lydon tries to get you not to talk to him, and if you're doing a phone interview he hangs up on you, or tries to get you to hang up. But again, it makes for such better stories.

So, I don't know who I was really disappointed in. I'm more disappointed in myself when I don't ask somebody something, or if I let a really good thing get away from me.

MF: You seem to be a big astrology person. Do you know the signs of any of those people? The Jimmy Pages and the Lou Reeds?

JU: Yeah, I always look to see what their birth chart looks like before I interview them. Neil Young's a Scorpio. When you interview someone like Neil Young, he likes to correct you, so you throw in something that's a little wrong, and then he'll answer it because he's also a withholder. Mysterious, too, so you've got to be strategic.

Someone who's an Aries will tell you everything. A Capricorn will consider what's good to tell you, what's not, and what's going to look good. They always have the advantage because they're so acute mentally. Jimmy Page is a Capricorn. Someone like Lucinda Williams, an Aquarian, is really nice, wants people to like her, but is really brainy. So there's a combination of that. You kind of do a ying and a yang with her. Leos like to brag about themselves, so you don't have trouble interviewing a Leo. 

I don't mind digging for it, but I'll use every technique. I'll try to shame someone into answering the question. I've got that relentless spirit. I have to come back with my story, you know?

MF: A lot of your famed pieces involve being on tour. Which one was your favorite?

JU: I want to say Led Zeppelin. The two times I was on tour with them, I felt so spoiled. They'd put you up in The Plaza, before Donald Trump owned it. It was luxurious and beautiful. And they would say, “Oh, if you need anything, just charge it downstairs.”

In terms of stories, I don't know. You see people in the act of being themselves more because you're not given just 20 minutes. On tour, people relax around you and forget you're there. You really get a sense of  how someone acts. Their facial expressions, and how the wind and the air is displaced when they come into a room. You get all those little clues that you don't get when you're not on tour. I like going to people's houses and I like being on tour with them because they let their guards down. That's really important to me. 

MF: What makes a good live set? 

JU: I like when they do the songs I know. I'm not a big B-side person. I used to live in Berkeley, and I remember the Allman Brothers would come to the Warfield Theatre and do a number of nights. One night I came to their B-side set, and I remember interviewing Greg Allman when I said, “Oh, I'm so sorry I came to that show. It was all this stuff I didn't know.” He goes, “We don't have any B sides.” It's like, okay, get that foot out of your mouth. 

I think there has to be some kind of familiarity. It has to be transcendent. It's like the energy of the audience is really what motivates, which invigorates, which is almost like a spiritual exchange between the audience and the artists. You can see when it hits that critical mass. It’s beyond music.

I've seen a lot of shows like that, and you can actually see the moment it takes off. It just gets into a different gear. You wait for those moments, that transcendence, that really happens.

MF: What is the most memorable show you've ever seen?

JU: I really liked The Stone Roses when they came back after those five years off and they played in San Francisco at The Fillmore. It wasn't their best performance and they weren't as good as what you'd see on YouTube because I'd never seen him before. I was just really wild. I hadn't been wild in a long time. And I'd only been back to writing for a couple of years because I took off a big amount of time when my daughter was growing up. 

And I just thought, Oh my God, this is why I do it. It was magical and it was dangerous. And the songs were great, and they were beautiful. It was all the things that you like when you're attracted to rock 'n' roll the first time. I felt like I had a second life, getting to experience that again. Who goes back to their teenage job in their late thirties, you know? But I did. I felt like that was symbolic for me. It was an amazing show.

MF: Do you prefer covering the up-and-comer, or covering superstars?

JU: I like both. This is probably not answering your question, but it's a truism. You only get a really good crack at somebody once. I’ve interviewed people over and over throughout my life, but an up-and-comer will tell you more. You’ll have a better story, but nobody knows about them, so not as many people will want to read what you wrote. But there’s this innocence, there's this hopefulness. There's this catch in their throats that you don't get when you're interviewing the top of the heap. I like them both. 

For every person I ever interview, it's like solving a puzzle. It's a mystery story, and I want to crack the mystery. I want to find the threads of who they are and then explain that.

Every story I ever do is about that. The mysteries are just different. But they're actually not so different, it's just that people want to read the bigger mystery on the bigger star. 

MF: Is there anything in particular that you've gotten someone to confess that you're really proud of? 

JU: I really hold people's secrets. I'll be in an interview and someone will tell me something and I'll say to them, “Okay, I hope this doesn't make me a bad journalist, but if you don't say it off the record, you're going to wake up in the morning and go, Oh my God, she tricked me into saying that.” People forget that they're being interviewed and they'll say things and forget they’re actually talking to more than just me. I will use things that explain who they are in their music, but the personal things that people have told me, it's like a stake to their heart and mind. That’s probably my biggest flaw as a journalist - that I don't like to hurt people.

MF: The next CREEM issue is a tribute to the legendary Lester Bangs. How would you like for people to remember Lester? 

JU: Lester was curious, relentless, such a big personality, and had such a big heart.

I have a quote that I stuck on my computer a long time ago, and on all the computers I've had since. It says, “Don't ask me why I obsessively look to rock 'n' roll bands for some kind of a model for a better society. I guess it’s just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.” He looked to musicians for the answers. He thought that they were godlike creatures and they had some information to impart. 

He held the people he loved up to a really high standard, and the big personality and the things that you read, like his interview with Lou Reed, had to do with him being disappointed when Lou let him down. He invested so much of himself and his beliefs in what they told him because he really did think that they were demigods, that they lived on Mount Olympus. He thought that they would improve him and make him better, like teachers. 

He was really a genius, but a genius for the common man. He spoke like everybody did, you know? He had no airs. He was just all-encompassing. He was such a generous soul. We used to get letters to the editor. Lester would take them and he would call fans all over, just because they wrote a letter to him. He really cared.

I think what rock writing began as is almost like a consumer guide. We were filtering all the music and getting the crap out and showing the jewels and letting everybody hear what we heard. Not like we're the arbiters, but when we found something, we wanted to share it. He was that guy. He was generous. He was really wonderful. He could be nasty. He could be mercurial. It was always entertaining. When Lester came into the room, talk about displacing the air. It's like the molecules went faster. He just had this like kinetic energy that was contagious.

CREEM changed for the better when Lester came. Lester and I showed up the same day, which is kind of a talisman for me. He really did contribute to what CREEM was.

MF: Do you have any specific memories of Lester that you keep with you today?

JU: Well, it’s one that I'm not proud of, but it's my favorite one. Every year we had a reader's poll, and Lester and I were usually the people who counted all the ballots. One year we decided to make him the top critic, which he would have been anyway. And I was going to be the second most popular critic.

Our co editor Ben Edmonds came into the room and he said, “I'm telling,” and we just laughed and went, “You’re telling? What if we make you number three?” And he goes, “I could live with that.”

We were always having wild, bad kid kind of experiences. We'd steal Christmas trees from a lot down from the CREEM offices. If Lester had too much to drink and he'd have to take a cab, he would pay the cab driver in albums. Those things are really endearing and inventive. Like I said, it was always fun. It was always unusual. I mean, I think everybody has a friend like that. Lester was a friend that became really incredibly famous, but he's always going to be that Lester who did all those funny hijinks. 

He worked all the time. He typed like a demon. He wrote faster than anyone I've ever known. And years later, I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't write as fast as Lester did. He was really an incredible being. He’s like the patron saint of CREEM. He was an incredible person.

MF: You often give advice to readers in your “Questions & Jaanswers” column. What words of wisdom would you share with aspiring writers? 

JU: Write a lot, and don't be afraid of rejection. Aim high. Just send your cover letters and even if your heart's in your mouth, pitch everybody. Don't even think that you can't do it, because everybody thinks that. We all have that little voice in our head. Just tell the little voice to shut up.

Buy those real hard copy magazines so you can rip out really good quotes and put everything that you see and you love in a notebook or on your phone. Collect words and phrases and descriptions. Just always, always do your craft. You know, it's really the best job in the world. I love it. I can't believe that I get to do this. I know that sounds so corny, but I still love it as much as I did when I started.

MF: You've always been sharp and witty, but I think you have the right amount of optimism to answer this. Is there any hope for a rock music renaissance? 

JU: People still play the guitar. I don't think it's a dead form. I mean, we are America's only rock magazine, and rock is a loose category, but I think so. It's the people's music. Not to quote a shamed hero, but Ted Nugent, when we interviewed him for the CREEM documentary, said it's how the tribe talks to one another. The tribe is still going to talk to one another through rock music. 

There's something great about the danger of guitar, you know? There's something really badass about big drums, and a bass that you can feel in your body. I have high hopes for it. I mean, I still listen to it!

MF: If there's anyone able to uphold that legacy, it's definitely CREEM. I have a lot of hope for it as well. 

JU: Well, you really keep the legacy alive, because you've got that same spirit.
 

-DJ Peaches AKA Madeline Frino