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He Got a TV Eye on You
By
Steven Ward
One day, back in 1974, a Lower East Side resident named Ken Tucker wrote
Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau an angry letter
because the Voice wasn't covering the sorts of bands that Tucker
was interested in reading about. Christgau's response was to give Tucker
his first professional assignment--writing up those very bands he wanted to
read more about. The piece was published ["Notes From The Academy," Dec.
23, 1974], and Tucker has been writing music--and other media ? criticism
ever since, for popular rags like Rolling Stone to obscure
where-are-they-nows like Gig. Tucker's primary outlet for the last
decade has been Entertainment Weekly, where he serves as their TV
critic.
And a damn fine television critic he is: Tucker on The Simpsons or Letterman is
essential reading. Should any enterprising individual with too much time on
their hands start up a TelevisionCritics.com, you can be sure the
site will virtually be dominated by Tucker.
Tucker was happy to talk to rockcritics.com and fill in some of
the blanks of his critical odyssey.
(More Ken Tucker here.) Steven: You spent a good part of the
'70s, the '80s, and part of the '90s writing about rock music. Today, you
are the television critic for Entertainment
Weekly. How and why did you switch pop culture mediums? Do you prefer
writing about TV, and if so, why? Ken: Well, I haven't really abandoned
regular rock coverage: I write occasional music reviews for EW and
do weekly record reviews for National Public Radio's "Fresh Air."
But you're right: I earn my living now as a TV critic. The professional
progression was this: first, rock critic at the Los Angeles Herald
Examiner from mid-to-late '70s (a great time to be in L.A., because
glorious English punk had hit and L.A. was doing its own, mostly awful
imitation of it (sorry, kids--X was a great band, but Darby Crash and the
Germs sucked) and I had fun ridiculing it in a company-town where derisive
music criticism simply was not done (read the corpus of the
L.A. Times' monolith Robt. Hilburn, a very nice man and a truly
awful stylist). Also, rap was just bubbling up, and I found myself one of
the few rock writers who was immediately obsessed by it--some of my most
fond memories of LA are of going to the Tower Records on Sunset Blvd every
week and snapping up every Sugar Hill or homemade-label 12-inch single I
could find, discovering treasures amidst dross in a completely random,
unmediated way, since no one else was writing about, say, Kool Kyle's "It's
Rockin' Time" on the Enjoy label. I look back on this time and cannot
believe the freedom I was given by the swashbuckling editors who ran the
paper from its magnificent downtown-L.A. Hearst building, Jim Bellows and
Mary Anne Dolan. But then, since the tiny-circulation Her-Ex was
always on the verge of folding and I had a wife and baby to support, I
accepted an offer at the Philadelphia
Inquirer, which was considered a big step up, because the
Inquirer was, in the early '80s, a Pulitzer Prize-generating
machine under the auspices of editor-guru Gene Roberts.
Going to the Inquirer proved the biggest professional mistake
of my life. Roberts insisted that all concert reviews be filed to appear in
the paper the next day, which meant handing in a review at around 11 p.m.
--a time, obviously, when many concerts are just getting good. I argued for
four years with him over this, saying that I was missing the last third of
most shows, and he wouldn't ask his movie critics to leave 2/3rds of the
way through a film, or his art critic to leave 2/3rds of the way through a
gallery show, would he? This cut no ice.
I did my best, which was good enough to make me the finalist for the
Pulitzer in criticism in 1984 [the first rock critic to achieve this]. As a
hard-news editor, Roberts was brilliant, but as someone making decisions on
arts coverage--well, let me just say that he thinks Bobby Bare is a great
country artist.
But I LOOOOVED newspaper writing: I discovered I could write well under
deadline pressure, and readers responded to the informal voice I developed.
But the Inquirer's we-know-better-than-you arbitrariness was
maddening. Fuck this, I thought--I loved rock & roll too much to do the job
in this institutionalized half-ass way, so when a position as TV critic
came up, I asked to be transferred. Lo and behold, I discovered that this
was a good decision: By the mid-'80s, my rock-crit colleagues were most
agog over bands like R.E.M. and U2, whom I could appreciate but never felt
any passion for (after punk, I could never understand the continued appeal
of the great-rock-band concept). Just around the time that Robert Christgau
was announcing his sensible theory of "semi-popular" music, I switched over
to covering the TV industry, where "semi-popular" got you cancelled, and I
re-discovered that I really liked writing about MASS culture, and
increasingly disliked the prevailing trend in rock writing, which was: Pick
a subculture (post-punk, dance, hip-hop, country, whatever), unearth the
most obscure examples of it, and then write hipper-than-thou panegyrics.
That wasn't for me; I was happier using my newspaper skills to ponder
Seinfeld and eight-hour miniseries.
Which, in turn, led to an offer from Jeff Jarvis, who was starting up
Entertainment Weekly for what was then Time Inc.
EW got off to a rocky start in terms of sales, and soon we had a
new editor, Jim Seymore, a People magazine vet whose mission was
to keep the red-ink-spurting mag from folding. All of us critics thought
we'd be the first to be fired, since all we ever heard from
upper-management was that we were "too negative," but god bless him,
Seymore not only turned EW into a profit-maker but has stuck by
the critics, with the result that EW contains more hardheaded
criticism of all the popular arts than any other national magazine. I have
pinned to my wall a yellowed clipping from the Village
Voice the year Entertainment Weekly launched, in which the
music critic Richard Gehr referred to "otherwise intelligent people (you
know who you are)" who would write for so "soul-depleting [an]
embarrassment as Entertainment Weekly." Since I knew Gehr slightly
in L.A., I don't think it was vain of me to believe that I might be one of
those "otherwise intelligent" depleted-souls, and I'm happy to say, a
decade on, that Richard Gehr
can kiss my ass.
Steven: Give me some bio info. Where
did you grow up, go to school etc.?
Ken: I grew up in Connecticut, the son
of a steelworker--an alcoholic with truly excellent taste in country music
(Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Ray Price, George Jones, Homer & Jethro) who kept
a rifle in the living-room closet for
special domestic occasions. As first child in the history of the Tucker
clan to attend college, I was able to escape to New York and go to NYU only
after
swearing I'd get a teaching degree--my father's interpretation of "learning
a useful trade." But a semester spent student teaching in a Brooklyn
junior-high convinced me that I wasn't cut out to be an educator, and, with
just an English degree and no money, freelance writing became a way to
finance
a pleasant mid-'70s, Lower East Side semi-bohemian existence.
Steven: Do you remember the first
piece of rock criticism that "touched" you in
some way?
Ken: I had begun reading scrupulously
Bob Christgau's Village Voice writing while in high school, and in
college I read his first book, Any Old Way You Choose It, whose
introductory essay, "A Counter In Search Of A Culture," was thrilling and
galvanizing on a number of levels. Like me, Christgau came from a
Working class background and proved you didn't have to have a trust fund to
pursue a passion. On an aesthetic level, I had always liked pop (as opposed
to rock) music more than my high school friends did--which is to say, I
liked Paul Revere & the Raiders' "Just Like Me" as much as, say, the Allman
Brothers' "Whipping Post," but, until Christgau, hadn't read a
justification
for my instincts, or understood the importance of following those
instincts.
Just as I had moved to Manhattan inspired by the poet Frank O'Hara's
"Personism: A Manifesto," so I determined to do some rock writing based on
Christgau's notion that, as he wrote, "popular art was not inferior to high
art, and... that popular art achieved a vitality of both integrity and
outreach that high art had unfortunately abandoned." Christgau's
writing, along with that of Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone and
in his book Mystery Train, as well as Ellen Willis's columns in the
New Yorker convinced me that there was a way to write about
rock in a way that could combine a critical apparatus couched in a demotic
style that appealed to me enormously.
Steven: Could you tell me how you
first started writing for Rolling Stone and the Village
Voice and which one you preferred and why?
Ken: Christgau gave me my first
professional assignment. I wrote him a letter
complaining that, under his music-editorship at the Voice, he
wasn't covering the mid-level bands that appeared at what was then the
Academy of Music on
14th Street. Christgau's response was to call me up and say, OK, I'll get
you the press credentials and you spend one month seeing every single act
at the
Academy, and write it up. I did that, watching everyone from Uriah Heep to
a pre-stardom Bruce Springsteen, spending as much time in the men's-room
where the weed was being sold and the music was being critiqued by the
tokers as I did in my paid-press seat. I wrote it all up, dropped it off to
the front
desk at the Voice, then a day later called up Christgau and
apologized for handing him such a terrible mess of reportage and criticism.
He said, in the imperious way I was to learn was his primary operational
mode, that I was an idiot to make such a call to an editor, that the piece
was very good, and
after a few editing changes we would go over together, would appear in the
paper the next week.
Looking back, it's remarkable that an editor would bother with a
nobody's
snotty letter, let alone give him an assignment based on it, and I owe my
career to Bob--after the Voice piece, I started writing the short
record
reviews that were then called "Riffs" in the Voice, and then
Rolling Stone noticed me and let me write some reviews, and my
freelance career was launched. The Voice was always the place I
was most comfortable writing--I had more space, I learned a huge amount by
being edited, line by line, word by word, by Christgau--he even let you
come up with your own headlines for reviews, if they were clever enough.
But to make a living, I also churned
out reviews for every rock mag you can name, including a stint as
reviews-editor of Gig, which must qualify as among the most
obscure rock mags to feature
major bylines and brought me into contact with Lester Bangs, Billy Altman,
and other good writers.
Steven: What were your favorite rock
mags when you started out and who were the rock critics that most
influenced you?
Ken: The first rock magazines I read
were the Paul Williams Crawdaddy (which was to be found only in
the sole "head shop" in the small town in which I lived and to which my
mother insisted on accompanying me, lest I also purchase rolling papers and
heaven knows what else), Rolling Stone, and 16
Magazine,"all of which, in the late-60s/early-70s, were equally
informative and fun. 16 was a fanzine, but a really well-written,
joyous one--for a time, stuck in Connecticut, it was the only place I could
learn about the favorite colors and foods of the British Invasion bands I
was crazy for; since it was a pin-up mag aimed at girls, 16 was
something I hid from
my friends--a true guilty pleasure; only later did I learn that
intelligent, witty people like, Gloria
Stavers, Danny Fields and Lisa Robinson developed
its tone.
As for Rolling Stone, I think Jann Wenner was a fascinatingly
eclectic editor--anyone who could found an utterly sui generis magazine
like Stone and publish writers as various as Greil Marcus, Grover
Lewis, and William Greider, is an example of how to use an autodidact's
instincts for cultural good. Of course, I say this from a safe distance: I
used to write
regularly--and only--for the Stone record-review section under the
various editorships of Dave Marsh, Paul Nelson, and others, but Wenner was
never my boss--a role that I gather is not an easy one for others to
endure.
Other favorite old rock mags: Creem, of course, for its
diversity, from Bangs to Marsh to James Wolcott, and Circus
magazine, which was marketed as a junky hard-rock/metal mag but when Paul
Nelson ran the record-review section was a fun thing to read. Without
Circus, I would never have been asked to
interview Black Sabbath, and in the process learn that I had no gift for
interviewing rock stars.
Steven: Were/are you a fan of the
Bangs/Meltzer gonzo style of rock writing?
Ken: Yes, but possibly for different
reasons than for some other readers. My
take on Bangs has always been that he was a great humorist--his interviews
with rock stars in Creem, esp. the period in which he was
love/hate-obsessed with Lou Reed, are magnificently, deeply funny. He was a
much better writer, I've always thought and speaking of "gonzo," than
Hunter Thompson, whose vocabulary of invective is far more limited than
Lester's. But as a critic, Bangs was useless to me--his judgments were
perversely arbitrary; it was all
about style, and while there was certainly nothing wrong with that (it
yielded, as I say, some brilliantly funny and occasionally seriously moving
writing), he sure as hell wasn't to be trusted as an arbiter of good music.
I think Bangs really came out of the Beat movement--his speed-freak
productivity an elaboration on Kerouac composing on a single great roll of
paper, and of Allen Ginsberg's creative mantra, "First thought, best
thought." And Bangs was a much better writer than most of the Beats, or,
say, than Charles Bukowski, a hack fake who was, unlike poor Lester,
accepted by the literary establishment.
Now, all that said, I think Meltzer is the better writer and thinker. He
had more range--my yellowed clippings of Voice pieces like
"Meltzer At The Met" are still fresh and revelatory--and while I never
shared his
disenchantment with rock, he, like Ellen Willis, Nick Tosches, Dave Hickey,
and Greg Tate, the other Great Rock Critic Apostates, channeled it into
non-rock writing that really holds up. I don't have that recently published
collection of Meltzer's work, but I have a fat file of Meltzer's writing
accumulated over the years that ratifies these thoughts about him.
You know who else was a terrific music writer who got fed up and created
something else? Matt Groening.
Pre-Simpsons, his columns in the L.A. Reader were marvelously
funny and strongly opinionated. I never liked the music he liked--as I
recall, he was fond of the Zappa/Beefheart/Can school of noisy
art-rock--but I never cared about agreeing with his taste: It was his
writing that was so energetic and exhilarating.
Steven: Do you still read rock
criticism today and what magazines or papers are your favorites?
Ken: I read a lot of rock
criticism--in EW, Stone, the Voice,
Salon.com, Spin, Vibe, the Source,
wherever I encounter it, basically. Christgau, Greil Marcus, and Simon
Frith remain the most interesting writers in the field by far, but as a
once-and-future newspaperman, I admire first-rate generalists who know
music-theory and make it accessible to the average reader, like my
colleague at EW, David Browne; my successor at the Phila.
Inquirer, Tom Moon, and his second-string, Dan DeLuca; Jon Pareles at
the NY Times, and until recently at the Baltimore Sun,
J.D. Considine. Those last 4 guys are very impressive because, having done
that newspaper labor, I know they have to slog out to every kind of club
and stadium act, apply their ears to every major-label release as well as
ferret out the best of the indies, and not succumb to the temptation to
become blurb-machines.
Steven: Any younger rock writers
catch your eye recently?
Ken: I don't socialize with anyone,
let alone rock writers--I swear to God, I didn't even know that "Jane Dark"
was a pseudonym until someone mentioned it just in passing about a month
ago, that's how little I know about my colleagues--so whether the writers I
like are "young" or not, I dunno. But: I think Chuck Eddy is editing a
terrific music section these days in the Voice, with that mixture
of very commercial and very obscure music I appreciate. A recent
Voice review of Kandi, for example, by Scott Woods, was absolutely
first-rate: An enthusiastic piece of writing about a semi-obscure yet very
mainstream artist that described the music vividly and gave you a sense of
what the artist's body of work was like. That's the best kind of
rock criticism. So was the recent Wu Tang/Jay-Z review by Kelefa Sanneh: a
whole world opens up in writing this vivid, that doesn't accept the
critical line for these artists.
As for other writers: I wish Mim Udovitch wrote more about rock--she's
really witty and has original ideas; no one has written better about
Madonna, for example, and her interviews are always revelatory. Ditto Sarah
Vowell--her success as an essayist and radio performer on NPR's "This
American Life" has apparently moved her away from regular rock writing, but
she's tremendous: The way she can describe her own ideas about and
emotional reactions to music is often stunning. I gather just as a follower
of their work that Udovich and Vowell would rather write books or write
about them, which is rock music's loss.
Steven: What do you think about the
state of rock criticism today?
Ken: Christgau & Marcus are as
vigorous and all-encompassing as ever. One thing that's lacking in rock
criticism is any kind of intelligent analysis of the current wave of
teen-pop, apparently because rock critics seem to think it's beneath them;
look back at what Tom Smucker used to do in the Voice, writing
extremely interesting, politically-infused, gently witty pieces about
un-hip acts like Anne Murray, and you'll realize that you've never read
anything as un-condescending and revelatory about Britney or N'Sync.
Most of the rock critics whom I assume are "young" suffer from the usual
flaw in young critics in all other fields these days: Their frame of
reference is stunted: rock began, for them, when they began to
listen to it. You think Kurt Cobain is God--fine; but tell me why Al Green
isn't Jesus, then. If you cannot discourse upon what specific Marvin Gaye
recordings are important and why, I don't care what your take on D'Angelo
is; if you don't at least admit that Chuck Berry and George Clinton are
both important and enjoyable, I don't place any store in your analysis of
the Deftones or Mouse On Mars. Do your fucking homework, and that also
means not just reading rock criticism but criticism, in general;
if you haven't read Dwight Macdonald's
"Against The American Grain" or Randall Jarrell's poetry criticism, let
alone Marcus' Mystery Train, you don't deserve your rock-critic
membership card.
Steven: Is there any part of you that
would still want to write about rock and roll and if so, about who?
Ken: God, yes. A few years ago I was
very interested in country music, but these days that genre seems virtually
barren. Writing about that barrenness would be interesting.
What maintains my enthusiasm is, above all, black music--hip-hop,
neo-soul, pop like Destiny's Child, whatever--along with my eternal
fondness for pop music that's either truly popular (like Britney Spears and
N'Sync and
Destiny's Child) or self-consciously not popular but which could
be played right alongside Britney--from Apples in Stereo to Jules Shear.
Steven: Along with Ed Ward and
Geoffrey Stokes, you wrote a book--a history of rock--put out by
Rolling Stone. You handled the '70s and '80s section of Rock
of Ages. How did your involvement with the book come about? Was it a
satisfying experience and do you think you guys came close to putting the
history of rock and roll in between hard covers?
Ken: Rock of Ages: The Rolling
Stone History of Rock and Roll (1986) was a very peculiar project, in
that each of us wrote what amounted to a separate, short book, each in a
different style, about a different era, which were then sandwiched
together. Ward covered rock's beginnings with a solid historical bent; the
late, generous, prodigious Geoff Stokes wrote a frequently lovely evocation
of '60s rock. Then I come along and, in what was my first piece of
sustained writing, composed this awful hodgepodge of history and opinions.
My section is by far the weakest, and that's not false modesty. The writing
of it was a horrible experience; my second child had just been born and I
was torn in three--being a dad, working for the
Inquirer (I idiotically didn't take a leave of absence--my
lower-middle-class work-ethos/paranoia forbade me from giving up a
paycheck), and writing this book, whose deadline I seemed incapable of
meeting. Editor Sarah Lazin finally had to lock me in a room in her
Manhattan office and we put my
section together like a jigsaw puzzle, literally spreading the pages out on
the floor and re-arranging them, saying things like, "OK, Michael Jackson's
Thriller has to come in at this point, but how the fuck do we
squeeze in pub-rock and the beginnings of punk in that chapter?" It was a
mess, and all
my fault. I could write a far better, very different history of that era
now.
No, the best writing I've done that's between covers is the essays I
wrote for the first, Jim Miller-edited Rolling Stone Illustrated
History of Rock & Roll, especially the Steely Dan essay, which I'm
really proud of and which--of course--was excised from the subsequent
edition that is now in print. As the band itself once said, "Can't buy a
thrill."
Steven: If Greil Marcus was putting
together a Stranded 2000 essay collection today, which CD would
you want to bring to a desert island and why?
Ken: I suppose under the
Stranded rules, a George Clinton mix-tape of his various P-Funk
incarnations wouldn't qualify. So it would either be Elvis Costello's
Get Happy!!, his best, most capacious collection, containing a
range of emotions that might get me through a desert-island stay; or Joni
Mitchell's Blue, which comprises the most sustainedly gorgeous
music in rock history, and to whose melancholy strains I would serenely
commit suicide on the island. For more on Ken Tucker, please see Ken Tucker dot net.
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