The Watch - Lizzy Goodman on the Rebirth of Rock ’n’ Roll in New York City From 2001 to 2011 (Ep. 153)

Episode Date: May 25, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald sit down with writer Lizzy Goodman to talk about her new book, ‘Meet Me in the Bathroom,’ which highlights the rebirth of rock ’n’ roll in New York City through bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes, and the Vines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Before we get started, you I want you to make sure you check out Love in the Time of Nuclear War by Chaos and Collins. Cam is a friend of the Watch, and this piece was just published on The Ringer, and he revisits 1988 film Miracle Mile, which is a classic Anthony Edwards up in this piece. This is part of our monthly column, The Politics of American Movies, where we explore everything from racially progressive westerns and anti-fascist comedies to documentaries about the working class and popcorn flicks with subversive bite. You can read Love in the Time of Nuclear War right now on Theringer.com.

Tons of stuff. Cam's amazing. Check it out. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at The Ringer.com and joining me in the studio, is this it?

It's Andy Greenwald! Whatever happened? Andy, very special episode today. We are joined by Lizzie. Lizzie Goodman, author of the new book, Meet Me in the Bathroom, Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001 to 2011. This is so fun for us. This is very exciting. Not only did we live through these years in New York City with most of our memories intact, but Lizzie is an old friend from the Spin Magazine Days and beyond.

And what she's done here is truly astonishing because it's not just that this is an incredibly detailed with tons of quotes from many of your favorite bands like The Strokes and Interpol and White Stripes. He has killers, Ryan Adams, France Ferdinand, blah, blah, blah. But it's also incredibly fun, incredibly funny to read. It's in oral history, one of the most fun formats to read, and one of the hardest to pull off. But the other thing, and I think this comes out in our conversation with Lizzie, is that it really does have a strong authorial vision about what New York City means, why it matters,

why this era that a lot of people might dismiss as just being some bands that never quite made it actually does matter to our larger cultural conversation and landscape. It is a total, total blast, and I think we had a really great conversation covering why Jonathan Fire Eater matters or it doesn't, what it means to export the aesthetic of Brooklyn and a lot more, right? Yeah, and it's a 600-page social history of New York, and a real spiritual sequel to Please Kill Me, the Lakes McNeil Chronicle of 70s punk in New York. And even more than that, you know, it's got such vision of what it was like to live during that time, go to those bars. is here are those bands. And also just like the people that failed, too.

You know, it's not all success stories. It's not all bright lights. Are you happy that the dark room is memorialized in a book? Yeah. I'm glad we froze all those in amber. Also, guys, I just want you to know that Chris really, really dug my quote about the Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers on page 220, where I say it's, quote, an awesome song. Yeah.

I really contributed. He said they finally released that one awesome song in 2002. They did it, bro. They did it. Oh, what a great talk. Andy Grimwald, A&R. If you are hearing this today, we recorded this on Thursday, the 25th. If you were in Los Angeles, you may have time still to see Lizzie with Mark Ronson and Albert Hammond Jr., both of whom are in the book.

And Gideon Yago is also in the book at Book Soup Tonight. Otherwise, she may be doing an event in your town, but otherwise the book is in stores now. You should check it out. And let's just get into our conversation with Lizzie. Chris and I are so excited to be joined by Old Friend, author of this brilliant. very exciting oral history meet me in the bathroom. Lizzie Goodman.

Thank you for meeting us in the podcast studio. Thanks for coming. It's not a bathroom and yet I came. You came anyway? Yes, I came anyway. Thank you for having me. I'm really, really thrilled to be here. We are so excited that you of all people wrote a book about all of our lives.

It's very exciting. You're welcome. It's very surreal. We are going to get into it. We're going to talk about all of the bold-faced names in the book. Like Andy Greenwald? That one's big. That's minor.

Italics, maybe. Zapp. history. Chris Ryan's in the book too. I get the Greenwald Umbrella Production. Under his shingle. Well, one thing that we have to talk about is I do think that Chris and I had a very zealic-like ability to almost be in many of these places. Like I have a lot of memories of going to Mishapes, which is a part you talk about in the book, either just as it was beginning and no one was there except Paul Banks sitting on a banquette by the DJ booth or

coming at the end when it was a disaster. Madonna had already left and it was about to be 4 a.m. And the floor would have been literally like soggy paper towel level of consistency and you might have died. So good call. That's the time you want to show up. Well, one of my favorite parts about the book is just this, you know, it obviously forces you to go back through your own memories of New York at the time. Such as they exist. But it's incredible also just to imagine like being, I'm sure that we were at bars at the same on the same nights.

And just like my vision of what would be happening and your vision of what would be happening and his vision of what we'd be happening would be so. different, not even like, oh, like, just based on like whether or not you, like, I thought Interpol was going to be a big deal or not, or whether or not you were like, oh, no, TV on the radio is really going to be the breakout stars from this, or just even the different bars you would go to. I was wondering what was a preconceived notion that you had about this time in your life that was really upended by the actual reporting of the book? Because there's so much reporting.

We need to say that going in. I can't even imagine how many interviews. I know. I'm pretty tired. Like I keep saying this, but it remains increasingly apparent as I actually allow myself to think about what I did because you can't really do that while you're doing it. And it's like, a crazy person decided to do this. I was talking to our friend Rob Sheffield the other day about that. And he was just like, oh, yeah.

If anyone, I mean, everyone tried to talk you out of this. You just wouldn't listen. I was like, God, I don't remember that either. So that feeds right into your... I don't remember. I mean, I think it's not so much. that there was like, you know, one interview or another that really wildly contradicted my memory of that time.

But it's exactly what you say for me as well, reading it and for all the band members who are talking about this and assorted folks who were around. It was just this sort of relatively subtle or maybe seemingly inconsequential, but nonetheless, like very significant differences in memories of specific nights even.

Like, what? That was at that bar? I completely would have sworn in a court of law that that was before this record came out or that record came out or we hadn't even seen that band yet or we were already and just the sort of completely conflicting Roshaman quality of memory. So that. And then I mean, the other thing that's important that that came that came up for me when reporting this and I've heard this from some of the participants as well is just, yeah, like the stories that I knew because I knew these people or were writing about these bands. or whatever are strokes, Interpol, to some extent, yeah, yeah, yeah, is, like, et cetera. Sarah, who was my roommate,

great star of the book, among the many. Sarah Lewitton. Sarah Lewitton, the best. Who will be listening and we'll yell if we don't say her last night. No, she's asked me 15 times when I'm coming here and is, like, basically, like, probably here watching. We don't even know. Hi, Sarah.

But just those were my sort of, like, immediate sort of cohort, I guess. But the DFA arm of this was completely a mystery to me before I started writing. So obviously I knew LCD sound system and loved LCD sound system, but they might as well have existed in a different city as far as I knew. I did a Tim Goldsworthy,

James Murphy, like, front of book thing for Time Out. It was like one of the first 10 things I wrote when I moved to you. Wow. Chris had a... And he had the same rap about, you haven't had just some of love yet.

Right, that. Okay, good. I'm glad he's not giving me any new material. I remember you had, Chris, you had a first edition DFA little pin that you had on your jacket. Oh, that's hot. He was repping.

You were repping hard. Too bad the eBay market on those cratered. I'm glad you mentioned the Roshaman-like quality to it because that's also something, that's one of the best features of an oral history, which is, I don't need to tell you this, one of the most difficult genres to pull off. Not that easy, turns out. But one of the most enjoyable to read. And one of the reasons it is so enjoyable to read is when someone says, it's the

Arrested Development thing with a Ron Howard voice, where someone says, it was easy to do it. And then Julio Bunton shows up and says, it wasn't. Totally. Ron Howard, our hero for the oral history form. Thank you, Ron. But also, this book does a great job of celebrating and gently interrogating and pushing back on this idea of legendary nights, legendary scenes, of this idea of anything being preconceived as genius. It all falls into, once these things fade into drunken memories is when they start to become epic. Totally. That's very well said. I'm like, wow, Andy, where were you when I needed to? I was trying to.

I was available. God damn, but I just didn't know to ask you that exact question. Whatever he just said is exactly what I meant, everyone listening. Yes. I mean, I think that is part of, that's the form and, well, that's the nature of memory and of legend making and myth making. And it's also a particularly, the oral history form lends itself particularly well to showcasing the way that works, I think. because yeah, like there's a sense of one of the number one things that I heard, this is probably the best way to say that.

One of the number one things that I heard when I started reporting this was literally from a lot of these artists, why would you do that? Why would anyone care? Like you're going to do what? Really? Oh, yeah. And that's partially, like, it's easy to be like, oh, that's just like, tell me how important I am rock star ego or something. And I'm sure in some cases that's part of it.

but I also think that it was genuine. There was a sense of, at least among not maybe a majority, but many key participants that there were, you know, really, wasn't that just a thing? That's that NME cooked up to like help us sell albums in the UK during that time. And I mean, I think that's, again, I don't think anyone who would, who says that means it 100%, but I do think people were feeling genuinely sort of baffirms.

by why a publisher would buy this, you know, why, and why I would spend all of this time trying to assemble it, which is a different question. But I think that what's great about your book is that it answers the question. And I have to say, even when I heard you were doing it, and we spoke about it, I was excited because this was our life and our 20s in New York, and I loved a lot of these bands and these characters, and I knew the stories would be good, even in there are so many that I had no idea about in here. But what I didn't appreciate, and I love so much, is that it's a little bit elegiacic.

as you read the book, because it is all oral histories or all seen histories about music or about any kind of fertile artistic period are generally stories about mistakes or missed opportunities and there's a bookend. What's weighing over this is really a bookend for an entire industry. This is really about the last gasp of trying to do something. And I think your ability to hone on that early and weave that through the book is what makes it crucial. It's not just about parties.

It's about how in many ways these were the last kinds of these parties. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that that comes across. and I remember talking to you sort of not towards, I mean, sort of towards the relative finish line of writing it about that and feeling glad that I think you sort of said that some of the questions that I was asking you were making you see a little bit more of how I was going after that phenomenon or that sort of larger theme. I mean, I hate larger themes. Like they all have all the larger, no larger themes, but that those themes have to come out of the stories of the characters in the bands and that they do and that I was aiming to do that. And that was a good sign for me. I was like, oh, cool. I'm glad Andy doesn't, thinking I'm slightly less crazy than he might have when this originally started.

It's a very heavy book. You are crazy. I am crazy. And it was a thousand pages before. So whatever. This is a short version. But he touches on something that immediately grabs you. And if you lived in New York during this time period, it's so evocative.

And if you didn't, I'm sure you're just like, this is fascinating. But you often, I often grapple with, you know, why do I not feel as connected to new music now? And I think so much of it is an extension of your social life at the time because you're going out. And even, weirdly, one of my favorite parts of the book is the intro. And this idea that you're unlocking New York City like a video game and that this cast of characters who are major D's and barbacks and record store clerks like I was and people who are working like kind of lower entry level media jobs and then all winding up at the same bars and the same nightclubs is what eventually informs the music. And the fact that this stuff grew out of Mishapes and the fact that it grew up out of sway and Morrissey Nights and weird things like that

was my favorite part about it because that actually may be what I miss the most about that time of my life. It's analog life. I mean, there's one of my favorite, I'm so glad you got all of that out of it and are feeling that it's because what's hysterical is that it's, we're not, I mean,

we're not that old, you know? We're pretty old, but we aren't that old. I will speak for all of us in this moment. But, you know, just that this starkness of the difference between a life that I would have had in my early 20s and a life that's possible for someone in their early 20s to have right now is astonishing. And just one of my favorite scenes that sort of brings that to life, even for me when I heard it, having lived that, you know, that recently still was like, oh, yeah, that's how we used to do things, is when Tunday is talking about Tunday for. from TV on the radio is talking about being at some loft party in Brooklyn and seeing some guy like kind of roof hopping from building to building and sort of, I mean, I may even as speaking of Roshman be misremembering exactly how Tunei phrases this, but basically that like there's a

dude, he's on a roof and he kind of comes into this party and you go and like raid the fridge and take whatever beer you can get out of that weird lot. It was me and I was Chris Ryan. I was practicing parkour and I was pretty upset. about the misrepresentation of that in this book. Well, that's what I was getting at. I didn't want to out you right here on live, et cetera. But, you know, and then this sort of idea that kind of feeds into this idea that you would see

that dude and like have a night with that dude. And then maybe you'd see them at the cafe a week or two later. And then you'd see them one more time. And that person would become your friend for that reason. Because it's like, I just saw you at the same places I go to because we have to leave our houses in order to make any kind of connection with another person. And that is just a basic through line. Like, no matter how shy you are, a lot of these people are, you know, paralyzingly shy humans who were forced.

I love this in the Interpol story where Daniel talks about, like, I had to be in a bit. Like, I had to figure out how to make this possible or I was going to be a miserable person in life. And so you have to go and talk to the Carlos D in your class and make that connection as opposed to what we have now where it's not like that. It's a great point because... That's how we met. This isn't... It's probably how we all. It's built and Rosemont.

This is not self-aggrandizing to say this, but to live in New York in this period as we did, every single, quote-unquote, character is someone that we would see. Now, I don't mean I was friends with them. I don't mean we were hanging with them at the same table, but there were the bars that they would go to or the restaurants they would go to, or you would end up in a booth with them or an elevator or in some cases a bathroom. These things did happen due to that personal collision. And I think that you're touching on something.

something that dates the book in a way. The other thing, and I had to get this in here, is reading this, the thing that I feel, other than the personal connections that you're talking about, the other thing that just carbon dates this for me in such an intense way is that Manhattan was cool in the center of everything. I was struggling with this, you know, trying to express this to people recently, but I moved to New York in, we all moved to New York, I think, in 99, right? Yeah.

I was, I mean, I was in, I started coming in, like, 99. I was in Philly, but yeah. 2000. Well, we were Philly before. C. But, so, yeah, in 99, 2000, I was there the summer in 98, the gravitational pull of every night and everything that we wanted to do or be or experiment with, all of it was the Lower East Side or the East Village. That was it.

Yeah. And that's where the bars were. And then I remember, like, in 05 or 06 being like Fat Baby is opening and bemoaning, like, oh, bridge and tunnel people are coming here. Who goes to Manhattan anymore? No, nobody. It's astonishing, except me. Like, this is how I actually don't, I never moved to Brooklyn, and I sort of like somehow skipped that.

If the reports about the subway are true, it sounds like you're never going to go anyway. I think that's done now. It was actually impression of me. I was training myself 10 years in advance to be able to survive the L train shutting down. It's, it's, no one will believe you. You've perhaps had this experience. I love how there's, I mean, I think the idea it's in the book, It's, I believe, one of the chapter titles.

But, you know, that cabs won't even go there. Like, that people do not believe this, but it is 100% true, that even, not even, you know, in 1999, where for sure that was the case. But in 2003, 2004, even moving into kind of the mid, if you were gotten a cab, they would sort of, they would treat your request to go to Brooklyn like something they would consider. So mad at you. You had to, like, basically be like, I'm not getting out. You had to fight with the cat. Or if you were me, to be like, I'm getting out. Yeah.

Exactly. It was just impossible to go there. There was Galapagos and there was Kokees and then later there was North Six. And like that was basically it for a long, long time. Yeah. I mean, I'm sitting here as someone who was tasked by Spin Magazine to write not one, but two articles that had to lie about where people lived basically. What's the opening line, Andy, about in Park Slope?

Like the sun is setting in Park. Yeah, they asked me to write a piece about Brooklyn Rock that featured all these Manhattan bands. And then I got, and I lived in Park Slope, which was not cool, it's never been cool, thank God. And I had, Dawn at the Co-op. I had Liars, I had Angus from the Liars, and other dude who wasn't Angus from the Liars, the short one, meet me at Great Lakes, which is this Indy Rock Bar and Park Slope. Yeah, and I was like, dawn, like, the sun is sitting behind the stroller emporiums of Park Slope, and we drink paints of Rheingold. And then with Vampire Weekend, too. Rostom lived in Brooklyn Heights when I interviewed him, but the rest, like, Ezra lived in the Upper West Side.

Yeah, they don't, I mean, but I think. think what that really, and I didn't really know this going in, but what I learned from the reporting or even from having to assemble it, you sort of discover your own story, right? Is that that is a metaphor for how, I mean, part of that is, like, I stand by the idea, sorry guys, but that Vampire Weekend are a Brooklyn band, even though they, because, or that you could make that argument. I'm not even sure that argument is 100% the one I would make, but it's certainly makeable. And the reason it's makeable to me is because it showcases the transition we're even talking about,

which is that geographic location is no longer what we're talking about. So when you say Brooklyn Band, you're not talking about what you were saying when you said two years ago a Manhattan band, meaning Interpol or the Strokes or DFA or whatever. Those artists had some sort of tie in a geographical way to where they came from, even if it was just the clubs or exactly as you say, meeting other people in a certain way. There was a circuit. There was a circuit, and that was part of it, you know? But by this time, it's like what people mean when they say Vampire Weekend is a Brooklyn band is entirely different from what you meant.

They don't need to be from Brooklyn, in other words, to be a Brooklyn band. Because the idea of it is what you're talking about as opposed to the actual place. Right, the exported aesthetic. Yeah, the export of the fact that you can go to, as you talk about in the book and is important to note, you know, that you can go to any city in the world and feel. a sense of the Brooklyn neighborhood of that city. And it's Brooklyn. It's not Manhattan. But it's like this hybrid New York idea

that's sort of been synthesized online during this period of time. I have like a kind of massive two-part question. Should I just go through? I'm excited. Do I have a pen? I might need a pen. So because this is, it's largely about the beginning of the book.

I was curious you're talking about assembling it. Obviously, strokes and stripes and yeah, yeah, as take up a lot of like the meat of it and that Radio City show is clearly like an inflection point. How did you arrive at Jonathan Fire Eater as Patient Zero? Patient Zero. Oh, my God. Awesome.

I've been talking so much about this and no one has put it quite that way and that is right on. Yeah, I know they are. It was immediately like I was like, yes, yes. You got it right. Oh, good. Gold stars for me. That's our review. I know.

But it was a. Nail it on page three. about a specific kind of trajectory that that's the trajectory I want to talk to you about. But how did you arrive at John Fier? So totally. They, I mean, reporting. Like you would, I had heard, God, I wonder how I even knew at first. I don't, I don't remember how I first heard of them.

I mean, I kind of knew, I think, but this is the answer, really, is reporting. Like, I had heard that there, like a lot of people say they'd heard. I mean, you're sort of watching it unfold. in the book of this band, Jonathan Fire Reader, who'd been around basically right before I got there and right before my friends and bands became successful. And it was like this weird ghost sort of boogeyman tale that people would use to be like, yeah, like the ones who wanted to shit on the strokes would use Jonathan Fire Raiders, the metric reference for how to do that.

But what was hilarious about that is that this had already started happening. Nobody knew who the hell they were. I mean, like a lot of people did, but nobody from that, like the strokes didn't know who they were. I didn't know who they were. I mean, as someone who was just a few years younger, I miss them. And so, but as a journalist, that's obviously interesting. You're like, why do people keep talking about this band? So what happened there?

And so anyone who had been in New York or had been around New York Rock, any of the record industry executives, any of the journalists who I talked to would mention them. And so I went to look into, I had heard their music. music already, obviously, like I hadn't heard of them in 2001 or something, but over the 10-year period that this was reported, I did, I got into that at EP, like the Interpol guys are obsessed with it and people would talk about it. So it sort of became for me as a fan of music during the period of time the book covers a kind of secret, I don't know, a secret band to know about that was like, yeah, they were pretty good. But then the reason I started the book with them was that it really just seemed clear from talking to people that this artist, A, was

important, was awesome, kind of already knew that, but B, had shaped the way the industry would receive these bands and kind of added to the drama, storytellers that we are, of how unlikely it was that any of these rock bands would ever get the hell out of New York City because this had just happened and had been in massive disaster. And Stewart serves as a cautionary Totally. What kind of shape is he in now? I haven't talked to him in a little while. He, like, Stewart is still so stewardy.

I mean, he, like. Stewart the lead singer. Stuart Leptin, yes. And then the band went on to form the Walkman once Stewart was out of the picture. Stewart has not, yeah, the walk who are, I mean, we got the Walkman, so like win-win. Although it would have been awesome to have,

one of my secret hopes is that Jonathan Vireta will reform in response to this and be like, okay, yes, let's do this. I don't know how likely that is. Stuart, I've known him now off and on for whatever, like seven years, six or seven years. I had written something that he was involved in prior to the book, and so I had met him or whatever, been in touch with him on Facebook. Goes in and out from what I can tell of sort of healthfulness. But, I mean, he was great for this. And the couple of times I've spoken to him since then, he's been, you know, great.

and then not so great and great and then not so great. I tried to contact him a bunch when I was putting photos together for the book and I didn't get any response from him, but I have a feeling we'll hear from him. They were, when I was first there and Trembling and Bloom Lights was big, but there was like a real attitude

about those guys among my friends as those guys being private school kids. That's so funny. Or basically being rich kids who were kind of like vamping off of DC punk credentials, but were like they could afford practice spaces and stuff like

that. But the thing that you get out of there that's really interesting is that at that moment, there's this sort of bifurcation of, and you kind of see it in the DFA guys a little bit, and you would see it again and again and again happening where it's like some people are into it and they're into the New York lifestyle of being like, this is just like the best. I hope this time lasts forever. And if my life peaks with DJing a more plant bar on Wednesdays, then my life is well lived. And Luke Jenner's like that, like, he's just like, I would just like bar back at plant and plays Ziggy Stardust on a $10,000 sounds to no one. To no one. And it would be amazing. Yeah. Incredible scenes like that. And then there are as, now that you put it that way,

sounds pretty good. It does sound like, it's just like that is. Can we rewind? Yeah. And then there's like the other arc of that, which is people saying like, but there is something to this. And there, there could be, we could be stars. And because they are, a lot of these guys had, and women had like a concept of rock stardom at a very, but Karen did too. Karen, you're right. These mod nights and being like,

that's where I invented Karen O. Yeah. And then when you see her and you're just like, somebody just put frigging Pat Benatar like right in front of me and a mighty robot. But it's kind of interesting. Yeah. It's kind of interesting that ambitious people

in the right place at the right time. And ambitious, as we talk about in the book, like used to be a bad word, but ambitious people can use scenes, and by scenes, I mean a gathering of creative people at a certain time and a certain place, like stepstools. Yes. And other times the steps stool will get shoved under their feet and they fall off hard. I mean, one of the beautiful things about the stories in the book is like, we put bands on pedestals, we put albums on pedestals or certain songs or certain moments, but people just couldn't hang,

you know, and people are human. Turns out. Yeah. You read this and, you know, you could joke about, well, the strokes never really made. or Interpol kind of scrape the ceiling, almost. And then you're like, well, okay, after antics, they were really fucked up on drugs. They didn't

like each other. And then they made a bad record. Like that, of course, they did. And then the media moved on. And then they've made good record. I mean, that's it's, I, but I have stuff to say about that, but I also just want to say about what you're saying. Like, the idea, this sort of myth-building thing and

your awareness of your doing it in the moment. It's really important and this kind of distinction, I think, also feeds into the criticisms of various bands that have to do with privilege and money and stuff like that. There's an important, there's space between ambitious and wanting to be fucking famous like Rolling Stone cover band rock stars or whatever the, you know, sort of like perfect avatar for what that would look like is, you know, playing the Grammys or something.

I mean, something kind of that would feel gross and big, you know, kind of flat way, right? And everyone, and there's a similar distinction between, I think, I mean, it's not similar, but the distinction, kind of the map of it is similar between coming from money, quote unquote, and having cultural privilege. And I think, you know, these are art school kids. The yeah, yeah, yeah, are art school kids. The strokes are not, but they came from New York City. They were New York City kids. They're like urban creatures, and that informs you in a certain way. It makes you cultured in a certain way.

They came from sort of, to varying degrees, immigrant families with like sort of interesting creative backgrounds. Money, some of them had it. Some of them didn't. But that cultural richness really shapes this. These are not like the whole idea about sort of money and privilege and rock and roll really pretends that you're either like Rihanna or you're like. It's like outsiders or something.

Yes, exactly. Right. Yeah, it's like soches and greaser. Yes. And that the opposite is like this true blue collar, no books in the house. kind of like you just had to play guitar rock because it was, you know, otherwise you'd probably be in jail. And it's like there's kind of some space between those two things.

And so what I think is really clear about Karen and that I think she's a kind of, because Karen is, to me, the ultimate rock star of this entire story. It's part of why she's on the cover. And I really did hear, I've said this in doing press for the book, from a lot of the other artists how much they wanted to be her or worshipped her from a lot of the dude artists. So to me, that stands true. But Karen talks about this. She was incredibly creatively ambitious and also not that sight about being famous.

And of course, we see that all the time and culture with filmmakers or anybody else, musicians. But I think that is, you know, so that distinction can sound kind of tired. Like, oh, yeah, right, great. You want to be like an indie artist with tons of money and the access to anything you want to do all of that, but you want to be not recognized. And that's not really a tradeoff you can fully have. And that's fair. That's a fair criticism.

But I do think all of these bands, especially the sort of Generation 1 artists that we're talking about in this story, felt that way, with the possible exception of James Murphy. Because he had enough experience, and he's a little later, and he'd already been in indie rock bands,

and everyone else getting successful was pissing him off. And that was more of a competitive, like... And he had like an almost a canonical ambition where he died that there's that line in the rapture part where he's like, we're going to make Moon Safari or OK computer. and it's going to be the record that people go back to from this time period.

That guy lives in superlatives. Yeah, and he was thinking about how he would rank in that band. And I don't think the strokes were, and I don't think Karen was in the same way, which is not the same as saying they weren't ambitious. They were incredibly ambitious. I mean, Karen's such an incredible New York story, because it really is that thing of coming to the city and just being like, I'm just going to be a different person now.

And I can be a different person on Friday, and then I can be a different person next Wednesday. Which is what we all do there, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember very distinctly, like, there being this, it was a very murky time of, you know, I was working at Kim's and I would go to Mighty Robot and see the AAS play with, like, Oneida, and Oneida would be bigger. And you know what I mean? And I was just like that, but then very, very right around maps, I think it was just like, oh. Oh, just kidding.

Yeah. And it was just like, this is actually the biggest band. Yeah, because these guys could be huge, like, once people hear this song. Yeah. Because for as much as I love many of the songs by. many of the artists in here and many of the albums. The A, yeah, as I saw them at the Roxy, I was out here for a different story in 2004,

and it was the best, I think it's one of the best shows I've ever seen. That was a rock and roll show, take away the quotes. You know, they did it. One of the things that we're talking about and that you explore so well in the book is just the vagaries and chants that are associated with time and context.

And what happens, you know, if Jonathan Fire Eater in the 90s, what would happen if they were in the 2000s? similarly, how much faster everything started to happen. And I was thinking about this, the time between the Strokes debut and Vampire Weekend is maybe six years. Both groups are ambitious, well-versed in musical history from not poor backgrounds. And that didn't say any of them are super loaded, but they both came from certain levels of privilege or comfort. and obviously their cultural touchstones are different,

but the way that each navigated, one was the end of something and one was the beginning of something. And neither could have existed in a different, if you fast forward six years or reverse them by six years. Absolutely. Six years earlier, or however many years earlier, what are Vampire Weekend? A vampire weekend tried to do this in 99 or 2000.

Well, and also to your point, I mean, it's impossible. You can do the thought experiment of what would have happened if the strokes existed five years later, but I don't think you can do that even imagine the thought experiment of the reverse because there is no Ezra brain without the internet. Like there is no Ezra musical brain without that. So a band like the strokes could in theory do have wanted to do or have created. I mean, then you have all the issues that we were already talking about.

Like what maybe not actually because they needed, this is the distinction, that person A from the period in which the. the strokes rose, had to figure out what kind of band they wanted to be. And that's like an affirmative statement. Like these are people who have like, you know, whatever in theory, again, sort of more generally, a clash poster on the wall and a David Bowie poster on the wall. And like heard Moon Safari maybe in a few years earlier and had their mind blown by this sense of sort of more dreamy, more electronic stuff.

And somehow that's like, okay, so we want to do, there's an empty cardboard box. We want to be a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit of of this, a little bit of this. It's an affirmative selection from a place of nothing to start. A couple years later, I mean, the age difference between, like, Ezra and Julian is, like, literally, I think they might have been in high school. They might have, like, four years, you know, something like that. They could have been in school together for a second. By that time, it's the complete opposite question of what kind of band do you want to be. It's not what kind of band do you want to be. It's what kind of band don't you want to be.

How do you, I love when Rostam is talking about, like, we made rules. Okay, you're not going to have any of the sort of strokes guitar sound or their drumbeat. No, we're not doing any of that. No T-shirts on stage. Right. And just these, but what that shows, I mean, that's an insane thing to be able to identify about yourself even, because what that means is you're basically, and those guys, I mean, the Vampire Weekend guys are, and the Strokes guys, but they're, we're talking already about

people who are predisposed to sophisticated, creative, you know, art in the music-making world. So I'm not saying like any brain can do this. We're already talking. We're starting with like some pretty talented musical minds. But just that someone like Ezra would have sat in their bedroom, downloading as he says, you know, everything from Kate Bush to Public Enemy and have put all of that into his mind computer style before he'd ever really thought about what kind of band to be. And that is literally, it's like, I mean, you and I talked about this for the interview for this. It's like a hundred years in five in terms of development of just the mind of what. what type of person wants to be in a band.

Yeah, and you read your book and you realize Albert and Nick and Julian all say, we like Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Yeah. Because they were our age, more or less. Yes. They were alternative kids. Yes. Whereas Ezra, and this is, you let me talk about this in the book too.

Like when I interviewed Ezra for Spin for the cover story in like the end of 2007, the beginning of 08, I was like interviewing an alien. He's not that much younger than me. I know. I love this part. I was so, I became the oldest man in the universe. Ivy League school and be white and like hip hop, said the guy who went to an Ivy League school and was white and like hip hop.

But how dare you talk about it and have fluency in all these different worlds and jump between things and never break a sweat? And he's literally just like, I do not know what you mean because he didn't, you know? But the funny thing is that Julian was the same way because if you were like, oh, so you guys are like, what if you took like television but then like made it with like Tom Petty? He would just be like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's just like, I just want to be in a guy by Voices Cover Band. Seriously, they did though.

But I do think, I mean, not to slag, I won't say this specifically about the strokes or even any particular band because it's not like I was in their mind. But I feel pretty comfortable saying that the average, you know, that just by virtue of what we just said, it's no slight, but that someone in Ezra's position, the average someone in Ezra's position versus the average someone in Julian's position or mine, for that matter, because I'm around their age, like did not have anything like the musical sophistication. Oh, yeah. Because you couldn't. So it is kind of, I mean, there's people who really disagree with whether this is actually an advancement or not because of what it does to have the music sounds. And I actually am kind of on that team. And I have stuff to say about that. Like I think, I don't like, should I, is this a place to talk?

Yeah. Is this a safe place? I don't feel music is more than the sum of its influences, right? Like how well you know. I don't like stuff that's so complex and smart. I feel the same way about writing or any other kind of art. That's so technical and so brainy that it forgets to be about like sex, basically. I mean that's it.

And I mean that in a sort of categorical way, but like that it forgets to be like primal and emotion driven. And I think some of the bands that came up in the Brooklyn era, so to speak, whether they were from Brooklyn or not, had you see them sort of bell and whistling on first records and even second records. And then, like, I love all those bands. But it took, to me, it took, like, a couple album cycles to work some of those kinks out in terms of just there's so much to do and we know how to do it. So, like, let's do it.

So for me, there's a, there's a fine line to where your ability to have access to all this information, like, overload. you to the point of not being able to make anything that's moving anymore. And that's the challenge of current, that's the challenge current artist's face, if you ask me. And so in a way, there's like, I mean, Jack White has talked not in the book, but amazingly about this over the years, about sort of the, I mean, this is the band was formed on this, right? We need limits. We need structure. We need the experiment, the sort of like gaming our own minds of saying you can only do X,

Y, or Z. We have two instruments. How does that look? the discipline of that was inadvertently placed on all the bands in the early part of this book because you had to go find a record if you wanted to find it. So I mean Albert says we didn't know who television were and I believe that. I totally believe it too. And the other side of needing or wanting that primal feeling to the music is the,

I still will never ever forget this is like the most out there like, complete like space cadets that I worked with at Kim's would play as this it and they would just be like yeah this thing is undeniable that's awesome and you would play it and whether it was the 300 time you'd heard it that week or whether or not we've been listening to the EP for like however many months before the album came out or whatever but you would just play it and it was like that that and bright lights were like these two things we're just like this is like this is like

as good as rock music gets like this is just we're good these songs are actually And this is why the Mooney Suzuki didn't make it or why, for whatever personality reasons there would have been. Like, yes, you can be cool and wear leather and have three chords. But like those three chords. And in that order and with that voice. And so simple, right? That's what is deceptive about it is people are like, I mean, even the shit that gets thrown at Interpol where it's like the, you know, they sound like Joy Division or something like that. It's like, I always thought that was funny even at the time because I'm like, how, that's hard.

It's pretty good. Yeah, like they're pretty, and they don't really. They do, but they really, you know, I know what people mean. Again, this returns to the thing I always return to in rock journalism, which I have been fighting about it for my whole career, basically. But it's not about the sort of anatomy of the song structure. It's about the emotional resonance. And when people say Joy Division sound or Interpol sound like Joy Division,

they mean I feel things when I hear this that that Joy Division also make me feel. And that is not the same as saying they, sound like that's a huge amazing compliment and that's what that's the thing that you're talking I mean it's undeniable because these bands found a main line to a primal human thing and right if any other band could have done it they would have and they didn't so I'm talking about guys who 99% of the time if you were like it's your turn who puts in a stereo it was like like the German techno that backs performance installations yeah we're like great so glad this

Oh, 72 minutes? Is that as long as a CD can go? Like burger ink? Yeah, you know, like pole. Pole two. And it would just be like sitting there like, like I can't believe I'm not high like while I'm back to sit through this. And then they would be like, well, let's just listen to this sit.

Amazing. So let's just go back into the weeds of this book for a minute. All those interviews that you did, you spoke to so many different people about very fertile, crazy, often at all the times in their lives. Were you surprised how willing people were to talk? Like, people, I mean, to be in a rock band means you believe in printing the legend. That is first and foremost the case. Yeah, I think so.

But, you know, generally, and all three of us know this, but Lizzie, you're still in the trenches. You know this. That, like, when you're on an interviewer on an album release cycle and you get access to an artist or a band, that's not the time you talk to them about their drug use or their partying or their friends, unless the album is specifically called, I'm clean now. You know what I mean? Which, you know, basically either albums are either I'm not clean now or I'm clean. Those are the two types of albums. That's correct. And the two types of rock journalism stories.

That's correct, yes. God help us, yes. How did it work? Were people just ready to talk, or did you have to do this sort of stacking psychological thing where you would say, well, Albert said this? And Ryan admitted this. How did it work? How Machiavellian and manipulative was I really is sort of the question.

I mean, I think I don't, I have not come up with a good answer to this question. I don't know why. I think because the reporting for this book was so different from how I would report anything else, I mean, A, I talked to a lot of these people many times. So one interview might be, and I'm talking over five years. So the way somebody is, this is a lifetime in a certain way. I mean, it's a mini lifetime in terms of how people were feeling a lot. There were a bunch of people who were in the book who declined to participate,

who eventually decided to participate. You know, it's not like on day one. I was like, great, Julian's so psyched to get on the phone and talk to me about this. Like, that's not how this happened. You know, there was a lot of kind of politicking behind the scenes and incredible, just unbelievably generous promotion of me and my project by people like Ryan Gentles or Imran or these people who you read in the book who are characters, but who are huge, almost executive producers of this even happening because they would email people on my behalf and say,

you know, basically she's not terrible and you can speak to her, we are, or, you know, kind of vouching for the project. So that's part of it. Like I labored on a level that I would never have time or really need to labor if you're doing a magazine piece for this because it was my brand. It's not like I'm Lizzie calling from, you know, New York Magazine to do a thing, and the brand is essentially New York, and do you want to be in a New York magazine story about this thing, and I will be the voice behind it. But it was like, I'm me.

I'm doing this book about us. There's no shoot. And there's no, exactly, there's no, the structure of it was completely different for me. And I think for the artist, too, just what is this really, well, what are you, what am I signing up for? And it's like, the other thing I was able to say

in response to the, what am I signing up for a question, which is different from normal journalism, is whatever you want. There are people in this book. I'm glad that people feel like, Like the quotes are awesome and you're getting a lot of good material. I agree. I mean, obviously, that's why I put them in.

But there's also not everyone unburdened themselves. I mean, a bunch of people did, and that's awesome, but a bunch of people didn't. And what I said to people and I meant it, and a lot of people took me up on this, is let's talk for 20 minutes about your favorite bar in New York in an era you liked. But you're important. This is the lead character in this story is New York City. it's not the strokes, it's not, you know, the realistics. It's neither the sort of the biggest band that you can think of, nor is it the smallest band you can think of.

It's New York. It's this period of time. I want it to feel authentic to that period of time. You were there. You were a character in New York's story. Can you give me a few quotes about what it was like then? And some people who got on the phone or would meet me in person really did do that. Didn't say would take a pass when I would say stuff like,

well, your bandmate is telling me that, you know, you guys did so many drugs at whatever. club and whatever year, they might just say, yeah, I don't really want to talk about that. And that happened, you know, so the reason it reads so dirty like that is just that I talk to a lot of people and a lot of people did kind of go there or were encouraged to go there by other stories other people were telling. And I think that's a testament to the form of oral history exactly as you say, Andy, that like, it is harder to like, it is harder to stay silent when your friend, who's also your business

partner who you've known for 15 years in your same band is giving. the dirt. There's a natural sort of performative instinct when I would bring up quotes from bandmates to say, well, actually, you know, so I'm not saying that never worked or wasn't part of the sort of technique of getting this done, but it was also not required in the same way that when you're doing regular journalism, you sort of, I at least am less inclined. I don't let people tell me what I can or can't ask them. So I wouldn't roll into an interview with someone for a project unless they were hugely, hugely important saying, I'm barely going to ask you anything about. what you think I'm going to ask you about. In fact, like, can you just tell me any, like, tell me

about your mom and, like, I'm sure I can make something work from that about that period of time. That's not what I normally say, but I did say it here. And some people took me up on that. We're going to have more from Lizzie in just a second, but let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by Shutter, the premium streaming video service devoted to thrillers, horror, and suspense. Backed by AMC Network, Shudder has a growing and dynamic selection of thrilling exclusive films and series, including the pregnancy horror comedy Prevenge, which is incredible. Sophia Tikals always shine and the ring versus the Grudge franchise mashup, Sadako versus

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Go to shutter.com and use promo code watch at checkout for a free month to start watching Yordscott today. That's shutter.com and enter promo code watch for a free month. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by, as always, the homies from Sonos. you know, I never really wanted to do like the home theater thing. It just seems kind of ostentatious. But with the Sonos playbase, you can have all the sound from the home theater without like the fake movie theater chairs and the popcorn machine and the welcome to my screening room vibe that only creepy people have. It is simple. It just goes right under the television.

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Meet Me in the Bathroom. I think one of the other things that's really remarkable about the book and really nice is that it has the right level of romanticism about everything. It is not, and this is also, you know, it's very fortunate, but a lot of the people in this book seem to have the same attitude that the rest of us who survived our 20s, do, which is like, boy, that was a great time, as Paul Banks from Interpol says, he was on safari a lot. Best line ever.

Thanks, Paul. You know, Albert Hammond goes through some very dark times, but because he's been through recovery and is doing very well now, he's very forthcoming about a lot of it. There seems to be the same kind of gentle, bittersweet nostalgia for their own careers in the time and their life that we all have, and for New York, except there is a villain. Oh, apparently. There's a villain that's emerged from these pages. Yeah. And curious how you feel about how Ryan Adams comes out of this. Yeah.

You know, we're big fans of Ryan Adams. Huge. He definitely, definitely never blew off our podcast. He definitely, definitely, definitely never did. That is hyperbole. It's not true. It's hearsay. Well, I mean, I'm glad you're settling that rumor right now.

Yeah, I want to squash that. I feel you squashing it. People saw him maybe at the security game in the studio. You're kind of, you know. Now she can't right, meet me at the podcast. Yeah, way to blow up my next project. I'm just saying that was not true if you thought you saw him about to come on our podcast. Apparently, I'm seeing things.

I'm telling you, having written in oral history, there's no such thing as like actual memory. So there you go. I mean, I think there Ryan, like, Ryan was amazing to talk to. It took me quite a while to get him, and he was supposed to give me 20 minutes, and he gave me three and a half hours. And I remember I was sitting in my house where I live upstate now in the, it was summer and it was like I was sitting in the grass and I can remember like I when I when I was transcribe or when I was pulling the quotes for the Ryan stuff I would like sense memory where I had moved at these because we were just on the phone for so long it was like then I went and made tea

I can remember get this when he was talking about this I was like boiling the kettle and then we were going in here I mean it was really a classic Ryan marathon and he's I mean I don't think I think Ryan into your question is in part like What do I think of how he comes off in the book? I think Ryan comes off the same way everybody else comes off in the book. In that, like, he did some weird stuff. He had some, like, combative relationships with people. He had high points.

He had low points. He did a lot of drugs. Like, he loved New York City to the point of... But that's the thing. He loved New York City. He loved those bands. He loved these bands. He loved being there.

He was, like, the ultimate New York character. He whirls on in. He's like, this is so cool. He knew to be there then. He was so fun to be around during that period of time, at least for me. There were two things we could always count on. Like when we would be at high-fi for long nights, we would know that Ryan Adams was across the street underneath Niagara recording literally anybody.

And we knew that Carlos was at San Loco next door. Totally. You could set your clock by these things in 20003 or something. You talked in the beginning about the idea of like, well, was this like some of the people being like, was this really that important or whatever? but the thing that came out that jumped out at me was like, yeah, this was the story. Like Ryan showed up and you knew that he was like obsessed with the strokes. Yes.

He made rock and roll. Like he was around. I still ride for that album. He was at these shows. He would just be at Brownies, then high fire or whatever. You know, and he would just be like he was a little bit of an interloper in a way that was like not bad. But you were just like, oh yeah. But you look at Ryan.

Like when I was sort of, you know, what? they call that in this, this Hollywoodland storyboarding, right? Like how this works. Ryan showed up not around the same time Connor Ober showed up. Yes. People forget that he was there. Totally. And like Connor is, you know, will be the first to tell you that he's no Puritan in his life. And like, yeah, so the idea of carbon, I guess I just think how you choose, this is what you were talking about. Like how you choose to feel about your own past experience shapes how you, shapes everything. It's like your focus and the story you, the story. you're telling yourself about who you are is how you're going to read anything about you.

So like what's been gratifying about this period of time about the book coming out and seeing people read their own quotes is for the most part people are like. God, I talked about I talked about. But that would certainly be, that's coming up from time to time. Yes, I'm hearing that one. But also like, it was really fun. Like, God, it was fun. I mean, oh, did I really have to tell you about that, all that cocaine? Or did I really, you know, but that you just, if you want to be a villain and you want to be a villain and you want to be like a person who's feeling sort of

somehow violated by the telling of your own story or the telling of other people's stories, like that's available to you. And that's available for a lot of people in this book, not named Ryan Adams, like a lot of other people. And that's not really what I'm hearing from most of them. We should start to wrap up just to let you go. You've been very generous with your time

here. A couple things I did want to get to. Obviously these interviews spanned a number of years, But of the people that you spoke to, were there any that stood out in your mind as being full of any kind of regret or disappointment? Or conversely, were there any who seemed like they were in even better places now having gone through this, whether or not their sound scan numbers matched that? Right. That's a really good question. I think, I mean, James and Albert both come to mind, Albert Hammond and James Murphy. I think because they both were – it's hard – I'm sure that –

I could answer that question well about people who maybe didn't tell me as much. Like there might be answers in there that I just don't know. But I think that those two were very forthcoming, so I know a little bit more about how they were feeling about things. And it's also important to note that unlike other rock projects, which are told maybe a long time after the bands are sort of not in the current, not making records anymore. All these bands are still, for the most part, active and doing interesting stuff.

So that is part of it, too. It's sort of like there we're all, as we've discussed, like remembering our own relatively recent history. So it's sort of like, how am I doing now? It's almost like they haven't necessarily thought about that in quite that way until you ask. But I think Albert both are true. I mean, I think he really went through it. And I think he was unbelievably generous with sharing that. And Paul, too, from Interpol.

And both are also, like both of those people are also in. really good places in their lives, it seems, and in their creative lives, which is not always the same thing. Like, sometimes you kind of have to pick. Like, I'm either going to participate in this crazy. I can either make art or I can be a sane human, and I can't do both.

And both of those guys have navigated that. And same of James. It's just sort of a unique thing that, you know, you, Lizzie, were the same age as many of these people. When these things were happening, you, like all of us, we were out, we were doing things, we were living our lives. but now you're at a place in your career where you've read this incredible book,

and this is a great moment, whereas some of the people you're talking about are talking about things that may be perceived as their great moments that are in the rearview mirror. Yeah, it's weird. It's a very weird thing I could only imagine for them to feel that way, particularly, as you're saying, not only do they still feel vital, they probably still are vital. Most of these guys aren't 40. I know. As I said, we are not that old.

Yeah. It's weird. No, just that, I mean, yeah, I think that that, is that's exactly right. It was youthful abandon for some of us, but it was their number one record for them. I know. And that there's a thing about contending with that that you couldn't possibly understand unless you'd been through it.

And I think there's a euphemism about like you are arrested at the age in which you get famous. Yeah, right. You know, I think there's some truth to that. And I think that have you. Which speaks a lot to why James kind of has it together. Exactly. Or Jack White.

I mean, he's another good example. These are people, just having a. couple years on the guys that got famous at 21 is or women. The one wrote, let's be real. I mean, God damn it. You know, more girls to the front. Anyway, please. But yeah, I think that that is another reason that it's sort of poignant to see people's mostly positive, sort of like emotionally responsible reaction to a lot of this. Like I was prepared for a lot worse, to be honest. And it's nice to see that people are kind of, again, I think it's partially to do with the fact that this isn't one individual's story. So you can kind of dip in if you're someone who had a hit record that shaped your,

that is, that is still shaping your life and your sense of yourself. And that hit record came out in 2002. Like, there's a way to kind of observe, I've heard this from Karen, actually. Like, she said it was so interesting to read all of my peers' view of this period of time and sort of have a different relationship with my own story in response to that. I think that's part of what helps this be, hopefully, not quite as, like, as painful, really for the reasons, as it might be, for the reasons you say. You obviously had to be, like, almost like an archaeologist for this time. Totally. When you look back on this time period musically, because one of the interesting themes that happens throughout the book, I didn't look not crazy about the themes, but there is a degree to which,

There is a degree to which there's this tension between self-sabotage and ambition, and there's a question about, like, how big could they have been if just this, right? And sometimes when, you know, I feel, we've talked about Room on Fire and how much we love that record, and there's songs on a few later strokes records that are just, like, galactically good. But there's something about the strokes that is not Coldplay. There's something about the strokes that's a little mean, you know what I mean? Yeah. And a little bit exclusive.

And that makes me think that they could never have been that big. They could never have been the foo fighters. Is there any could have been contenders, bands or songs that you went back and listened to? And you were like, how is this not my hero by foo fighters or something or, you know, Viva La Vita or something like that? I mean, people say the rat by the Walkman. I don't. I hear that, but that's not the one that. Honestly, I mean, it was the

realistic to me. Like, when I used to hear them, I thought they were, it was like stadium Elvis Costello. I mean, it just felt, to me, they felt, but again, we're talking about, it's not like I thought, oh, first of all, I was 21, so I wasn't thinking. You know, you're not thinking any of this at the time,

which is part of the point. I had no background of music journalism. It didn't understand the industry. But in terms of, like, bigness, that sense of sprawling, like, I can feel this in a car with the windows rolled down on an American highway kind of. I mean, maybe not American Highway in their case because they were sort of, there was something, yeah, kind of like naughty English about them.

But the sound was much cleaner to me and more, yeah, richer, bigger. It's the big thing than the strokes were, which, and that's not how they sounded. And so them, but I mean, it's not like I'm saying, oh, you know, I thought the realistics were going to be Tom Petty, because I wasn't thinking about that. Nobody was. You thought none of these bands would ever be anybody. That was the whole point of liking them in a certain way. It was like, how rad is it that we get to be here right now listening to this?

It's just that Slow Hand sounded good at lit. Slow Hand sounded so good at lit. But that's also kind of like saying. And then the question is really, it's like seven nation army gets sung after every goal in Germany. So to me, the idea of exactly, to be able to say at that time, it was just as crazy to say that the white stripes would get to that level of fame it would have been to say that the realistics would be to get to that little of fame. So you feel weird sort of arguing that right now, but it's like, what the hell are the white

stripes doing in that? No, that was not supposed to happen. There's one thing about what you just said that I just want to add that Jenny LSU talks about. And I think she, this quote is in the book and it's in the New York Magazine excerpt. And I really, this quote like when I, Jenny is brilliant, a brilliant critic, a brilliant historian of music and art. she, when I heard, when she told me this, I was like, I understood the answer to this much better than I. She helped me figure this out, basically. She talks about the difference between underground and mainstream.

And not in the sense of like, ew, like, ew mainstream. Like in the sense of big rad, like Tom Petty. Joshua Tree. Yes, thank you. Exactly. You too. Awesome bands who are big in that way, who have the sound you're describing. And she basically says, like the strokes were underground.

They're this other thing. And the killers and the Kings of Leon were mainstream. And again, in no kind of dissing way, but in a sense, in the sense of exactly the distinction we're talking about, like, what is this sound really? And what is the idea behind the sound for the artist making it? Julian wanted to be guided by voices. And Brandon Flowers wanted to be a giant rock star.

And you hear it. Where are they projecting to? Yes. In literal and figurative terms, that is a huge part in it. So I think that, I think about that a lot when I think about the question you just asked in terms of that distinction and who could have been this and who could have been that and whether that question even matters in that way.

Yeah. And I hope you don't mind asking about this because I just feel like we have to talk about it before we leave here, which is that, you know, we're talking about how a lot of these people, you know, there isn't sadness in the book. There's nostalgia. But obviously we lost someone who was a close friend of ours, particularly close friend of yours. The book is dedicated to him, Mark Spitz. And one of the truly great gifts of this book is that he is so present and so alive

in this book, no one would have loved, I mean, no one you know this, no one would have loved being in the book more. No one would have loved being called out as a star of the book more. No one would have felt he was not in it enough more. That was Mark's primary criticism of the book. He was like, it's pretty good. I could be in it more. He, when I, you know, we lost him in February in the small piece I wrote about him I was saying, and I still believe this, which is why I'm saying it again, like for as much as there always should be rock and roll bands, like the ones you write about here, there should be a rock and roll writer who's willing to take those chances, believe that.

dream that big and go that hard. Go that hard. Yeah. Could you just talk a little bit about his role in, literally, he's one of our, like, Dantes into this world, which is what, I got to say, it's what he wrote a memoir. It's what he always wanted to be. He's, I know. He's very pleased.

I know that. And, you know, people have asked me whether, you know, whether I'm comfortable talking about it. him and like why and I I want to talk about him because it's exactly what he would want me to do and and also because it's relevant to the story for a variety of reasons it's relevant because he's a huge character in the book it's relevant because I dedicated the book to him so he's relevant on the page in a in a and and by relevant I mean like a major character in this story and a commentator on it it's so funny in so I mean you need when you're writing an oral history I learned from writing one having never written one before stupid stupid stupid anyway

I, you really, and you were great at this too. I mean, you need characters who are authorities, you know, critically minded, so to speak, but not criticy in their speech patterns, because it has to match the tone and tenor of this sort of like scene. And by scene, I mean actual visual, you can see what's happening kind of scene telling. That's how I wanted it to feel. I wanted it to feel like you could watch it when you're reading it. And Mark has a gift. I mean, an unbelievable writer and an unbelievable ear for dialogue.

Like his plays and his, I mean, I always think I used to tell him all the time when I was willing to compliment him, which was, you know, you had to be careful with that. Very, very stingy with that. That I thought his music writing was actually his least, the least good stuff that he produced, even though it's amazing because his ear for dialogue and his sense of sort of profane storytelling in his plays and in his plays. and in his screenplay work and in his memoir for sure and novels and stuff was so good. I mean, just so sharp. And he has this way in this book. I mean, of I needed someone to come in

and be able to say rock writers were stuffing lobsters in their pants at fancy parties as opposed to someone coming in and saying, well, this was an era of decadence in the music industry and there was quite a bit of money rolling around. And it's just like, yo, we were stealing shit from parties because it was free and we were broke. and just the ability to kind of color in the time that way.

So I know that Mark, I mean, before he died, I already felt like he was a huge gift to this project. And then, I mean, the other thing is just, you know, he was my boyfriend for years and he was my friend for a lot longer than that. And he, this project was, as we've discussed, unbelievably daunting. And I really wasn't aware of what I had gotten into. I really wasn't. And it took longer than it should have. And all the, you know, it was hard. It was really hard for a long time to make this happen.

And Mark was my lifeline. Like I would get on the phone with him and just say, this one note is coming to me. I didn't know how to do this, really. And he has written some of the greatest oral histories in journalism. And he understood the form really well. And he helped me. So I would say one example in particular is early on I had kind of all the bands

we're talking about their early life stories, kind of pre-9-11, the rush to them finding their sonic voice, so to speak, and moving into the, and it was kind of propulsive, but you would have to be with Interpol for 20 pages, and then you'd have to be with the AES for 20 pages. It was not broken up successfully,

and I was like, but I don't know. I remember being, you know, in my house, on the floor, like kind of in a ball, like, I can't make this work. And I called Mark, and he said, oh, no problem. You just stop at a particularly exciting point. and go to the next band and literally just cut.

I mean, an entire solution for basically the first hundred pages of the book comes from one note that Mark just had in his pocket. Like, he was on the way to get a coffee and was like, oh, yeah, I have a second. Yeah, here's what you do. Boom. I was like, thanks. Talk to you later. You know, click.

It's wonderful to talk about him and maybe even end here because, you know, I feel like the thing about you leave this book thinking is that New York City means different things to different people. but everybody needs it, whether you live there or not, and everybody needs it to exist as something. And that thing is almost always 50% or more fictional or affected. And that's part of the thing that makes it great. And you need people to believe, like James Murphy,

believe that he could throw these parties and pull it off. You know, Carlos D could wear a holster. You need to have some sort of otherworldly faith in something. The fantasy. And I think that Mark, like when I met him, and I'm sure when you met him too, who just graduated from college and I'm like, I'm going to write about pavement

and I'm going to live in New York City and he was just like blowing cigarette smoke in my face. And wearing a boa. And wearing a boa and saying New York City has to be something more than this. There has to be more. And he was dogged about that. And he helped find it.

And in this book he helps readers find it and you did an amazing job recreating it for everyone. Yeah, it's an amazing achievement. It's just like also just like such a touching, I think everybody leaves New York and thinks that New York has then closed the door. Like, you know, But it's like New York's like put up like a gone fishing sign.

That's the guy who moved out in 2012. One year after this book ended. The thing that I love about this is how it illustrates just like you could do, you could just like kind of live in New York and work at San Loco or work at a bar and you could still live there. And that was maybe the, that might be the last time you can do that. Or not. Yeah. I mean, that's part of the great sort of the lesson of New York over and over again is like it's for you when it's for you.

and then it's not for you and it's not for you. And, you know, Karen, oh, like our time, this idea of this being our time, the idea of that is universal. The time in which that's true for you is not. And the book is about our time, meaning the people in this conversation and the people we shared that period with.

And it's also, hopefully, universal in that the energy that propelled this period of time is eternal. And it belongs to New York City, Whether you can get it there right now or not is not certainly harder for all the reasons we know practically. But probably, I doubt it's impossible. I know people who are doing it. But also it might be that New York is right now just happening in, you know, Kalamazoo for all I know.

But it's still New York. If that's where it's happening, it's like there's a brief satellite outpost of New York City in some city where this is going to be possible. And it's right for us to be feeling that. our time ended and it's also right for it to happen again to someone else at some other point in New York City or elsewhere. And that's what New York offers is the eternleness of that idea of itself. I personally am looking forward to meet me in my abandoned tax shelter condo on the 64th floor. It's going to be good. Me too. Yay. It's a terrific achievement. It's a great conversation. Do you like this condominium?

I have many of them. Thank you for coming to talk to us. Thank you for letting me be a tiny part of it. Oh my God, thank you guys for having me. It's such a thrill to be here. Oh, wait. Can we ask one question? Yeah. Is this in a room on fire? Oh, mean.

No, this is a long-running... Yeah. I have to pick? Yeah. We made Albert. We made Albert pick. I ran into a pumpkin carving party. Did you...

That's what he's about these days. You were on Team Room on Fire with me. That sounds right. No. I guess I'm on Room on Fire. I know where you are now. I mean, I'm... I'm on team as this is it.

Okay. If I have to pick. Yeah. Meet me in the bathroom. Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001, 2011, published by Day Street. Yeah. An imprint of Harper College? That's correct.

By Lizzie Goodman. Go buy it. Thanks so much. Thank you guys. What fun. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Shudder's exclusive series. George Scott, a 10-episode detective series praised as a Borgon and Stranger Things mashup by the Toronto Star.

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