WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 635 - Bob Guccione, Jr.

Episode Date: September 6, 2015

Bob Guccione, Jr. knows a thing or two about publishing. He’s the founder of Spin Magazine, and his father was the man behind Penthouse. Now back at Spin to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Bob talks with Marc about the problems in the publishing industry, the state of journalism in general, and where he thinks he fits into all of it today. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Take a closer look at how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising.

Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! and ACAS Creative. Fuckbuddies, whatthefucksters, whatthefuckadelics, whatthefuckmans. How's it going? I'm Mark Maron. This is my show, WTF. Nice to be here. Nice to talk to you. Hope you're doing well. Happy Labor Day. Be careful today. Don't drink and drive. Don't hurt yourself. Don't hurt others. If you're going to drink, try not to cry in public.

Try not to cry at family gatherings. Don't cry at the barbecue. Don't be afraid to take a nap. Don't throw up by yourself if you're laying down. If you know you're going to throw up, you're probably okay. But try not to pass out and throw up laying down. Okay? And, you know, take it easy. Take it easy. Eat some stuff that's shitty for you and, you know,

try to be nice to your friends and family today on this holiday day today on the show bob guccioni jr bob guccioni jr who i knew years ago bob guccioni jr was the uh creator and editor of spin magazine and now he's uh there as a guest editor for its 30th anniversary he's curating 30 iconic stories from the magazine's 30-year history like later this week spin.com is posting a new video interview with chris novoselic i don't ever know if i pronounce his name right either of them of nirvana the bass player if that helps out tall fella and they're republishing chris uh original war reporting from croatia which was first in spin back in 1993. Guccione and I go back a little bit. We knew each other.

They did a small bit on me a million years ago, one of these weird little kind of like, look what's happening kind of pieces. It was a kind of two-page thing, not on me, but I had a bunch of little things, little moments. Had this great picture of me, and Tracy Pepper wrote a little piece on me and quoted a joke that I'd never done before

and would never do again that made no sense I remember like this is going to be great it's going to be in spin magazine like that fucking joke it wasn't even a joke it was a fragment of a joke it was weird crowd work oh my god I just saw it as another indicator that I got no luck in the world. Things worked out. That was probably 1992 or three. And then Guccione and I, we kind of, because I was in the magazine, then I wrote a piece for Spin. And I wrote a piece for the last page that I worked very hard on with the help of my buddy, Devin Jackson. And then he invited me to, like, he used to have these dinner parties I gotta talk to

him about this maybe I will but we used to have these dinner parties like these salon evenings where you know he just invited a bunch of random people who were at the cutting edge of something and you just go over there to his place on the west side and eat pasta and sit around and chat that i think the idea was to have a compelling conversations about what's happening now man where are we at and one night that guy do you remember that guy i think his name was jaron lanier he was like the first like you know in you know cyber philosopher computer guy he had dreadlocks he's a white guy with dreadlocks he's on the cover of all the tech mags or the two that were available then like wired and he was like a thinker man you know a futuristic internet computer on the cutting edge of tech at that time but he was also like this sort of

pagan-y mystic presenter like he presented himself like he was some sort of little little dreadlocked buddha of kind of a sort and he immediately bothered me it bothered me when i saw him on on magazine covers and there he was you know he just said you got all this press like he was some sort of fucking wizard and i just remember he's a little kind of roly-poly guy with his dreadlocks and his little beard and i picture that he perhaps he had a flute or a lute not a lute a flute or a a pan flute that's what i picture he's playing perhaps a small instrument a primitive instrument at the salon dinner party at bob gucione's house. And I just remember being there. I think I must've been with my first wife and he's just sort of all filled with himself and

sitting there eating some pasta. And he goes, I don't think dogs have souls. Dogs definitely don't have souls. And I'm like, Oh God, I got to go. Let's go to a comedy club where people at least are funny. And then he goes, but goats do. Goats definitely have souls. Goats have souls. And I picture he just pick up his pamphlet. Oh, my God.

That was a rough evening. Rough evening. But I hadn't seen Bob Guccione in a long time. He'd kind of been through it and been around and resurfaced in New York. I thought, why not catch up with him? He had some stuff to say. It was an interesting chat about journalism, the state of things today and the state of Bob Guccione today. All right.

So that's coming momentarily. So I had an embarrassing thing happen. Lately, I've been panicky. I think it's because of my insane caffeine intake. Anxiety is high. And every little thing just happens at the same frequency as every other thing, no matter what the intensity of it is emotionally or psychologically. So as you know, I got some work done on my driveway.

And a lot of the dudes who were working on the driveway had a picnic on my grass. And then it looked like they might have dumped some chemicals on my grass of some kind, some cement chemicals. I don't know. It was a nice outing. We all had burritos and Cokes with lime and hot sauce. And I sat there and was unable to communicate with anybody except for smiling. And occasionally they laughed at me.

But after everybody left, it looked like my grass had been through the shit and I thought it was all dead. And then I go over to my sprinkler timer, which was unplugged. I plug it back in and it ain't working. Now, there was a time in my life where I would have taken the afternoon to go ahead and fix the sprinkler timer. I tried. I checked the fuses. I checked the lithium battery. Nothing.

It didn't matter. It was broken. I opened up the back and there were several brown widows in there with very weird looking egg sacks. Very interesting egg sacks. I think the brown widow has it. It's a little the standard spider egg sack, but they're spiky. They look like little stars, little stars filled with mildly poisonous arachnopods. But I didn't care, man.

I was looking to fix this thing. Couldn't fix it. So I panicked. I texted the guy that does uh my landscaping yeah i have a guy that comes twice a month to to to cut back cactuses and play with the yard but he's a great guy his name's jose so i text jose uh now i i need to not i'm not trying to be insensitive this is a real thing real thing jose doesn't really speak english he's a very sweet guy doesn't speak english he's very good at his job doesn't speak english so i need to text him

because i'm panicking about the sprinkler timer that i'm not sure i can fix or i should fix or whatever so i text jose you know jose uh it's mark timer no work so i i try I I was texting in broken English uh don't know what to do uh grass brown uh please help so there was that texting and then he texted back you know a very lucid answer like okay what's going on uh I'll try to to make it by if there's anything I can do to help and I'm like wow so Jose it's not great he doesn't understand the language when I speak it, but he's very proficient reading it and writing it. And I thought that was very impressive. So I go back and forth with Jose all day.

So eventually my panic spins into a fucking nightmare. And I realized that the timer is broken and I realized I'm a grown ass man and I can fix a shit myself or maybe at least go buy a new timer. So I went to the Home Depot side. They had the timer, the new one that replaced the one that I had. And I went and got that timer. And I'm texting Jose the whole time. And he's saying, I'm going to be there between 4 and 5.

And I'm like, great. I'll be back at 4.30. I'm getting a timer. And so I go get the timer. And I drive back. And there's a couple of dudes on my lawn waiting for me. And it's the guy that does the plumbing at my house occasionally when i have problems with the plumbing his name is jose

as well and i'm like oh shit and i get out of my car and i'm like holy shit dude why are you here and he's like i'm here for you i'm like oh i was texting the wrong jose which i thought might have been taken the wrong way like see that's how sensitive things are in the country where I'm like, there was nothing insensitive or weird about that. There's many people named Jose and a lot of them are Latinos. But I said that to Jose the plumber who speaks perfect English. But I told him I was texting another Jose, but you're probably the guy that could really fix this. Actually, I got this new timer and he's like, Oh yeah,

I can fix that. But now I didn't know what else to say. Cause he probably thinks I'm a fucking moron. And I don't know. I'm like a, like, I seem like a smart guy, but I'm kind of illiterate because I'm texting him a guy who speaks the

language proficient. You know, he's, that's what he speaks English. And I'm texting him like the timer, no work. Can you come today please help me so he didn't say anything and i didn't say anything and uh it was okay maybe he

thinks i'm a moron it's okay i can live with that because the timer got fixed and we set it up and he uh he came and took care of a drain problem so it it was a big day. And then today, today, Jose, the, the, the landscape guy, he came to double check the timer and he replaced some, some wires. And we smiled at each other a lot and laughed. And I tried to tell him that the cactus and back look good. And he goes, move them. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, they're good. Bueno, bueno, good. But everything worked out and i know that you were concerned in this time of drought how much i'm watering my lawn and do i should i be watering my lawn shouldn't i probably be looking into a more indigenous garden yes i

should get an indigenous garden is that what they're called desert plants i like them but i don't know man i think i'm holding on to something with these plants here the cactuses look great but the stuff out front my ex-wife planted it I used to think I keep it because I won it's my house

maybe it's time to let it go maybe I should just burn the fucking house down to grieve my past no just a garage standing no just move through it emotionally like a normal person. Did I mention Australia? Going to Australia.

I'm going to be there. Going to be in Australia. Going to be in Sydney. When? I'll tell you. October 15th at the State Theater. I'm going to be in Melbourne. When?

October 16th at the Palais Theater I'm going to be in Melbourne when? October 16th at the Palais Theater. Going to be in Brisbane when? October 17th at Brisbane City Hall. There, now you know. Now you know. Now let's go to the hotel where I talked to Bob Guccione Jr. Hadn't seen him in a while. It was nice to talk to him.

Enjoy. You can get anything you need with Uber E eats well almost almost anything so no you can't get snowballs on uber eats but meatballs and mozzarella balls yes we can deliver that uber eats get almost almost anything order now product availability may vary by region see app for details it's a night for the whole family be a part of kids night when the toronto rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first

5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Now, you and I didn't sleep together.

I think when I met you, I can't remember why, but I was with a woman who became my first wife. Here's what I remember. You invited me over for a thing. You used to have these dinner parties. That's right. Yeah, you had these dinner parties. And all I remember is like I was like- Totally random ones too.

Right, weird collection of people. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, fuck, what is this? You know, I was just a miserable comic, and I'm like, this sounds fancy. And I went over to your house. I can't remember. All I remember is that guy, Jaron Lanier was there a miserable comic, and I'm like, this sounds fancy. And I went over to your house. I can't remember. All I remember is that guy, Jaron Lanier was there. Lanier, yeah.

Jaron Lanier, yeah. And I was there, and he was there, you know, holding some sort of flute or something. That was one of the most brilliant scientists in the universe. Is he? Yeah, he invented virtual reality. What does that mean? Well, you know, the gloves and the... Yeah.

No, I know what it is. No, not the virtual reality the military had. No, I know what it is. No, not the virtual reality of the military hat. Right, right. That preceded him. Yeah. But no, he's a brilliant computer scientist. No, I know. I know he was.

And there was a lot of heat on him. And, you know, he's on the cover of Wired Magazine. Yeah. He's a great friend. Still? Still. Still, yeah. And used to write for me at Discover.

Discover. That was what happened after spin right or at the same time gear after spin what it's all right let's go through the like where do you live now in pennsylvania well how the fuck what like on a farm no not quite a farm but in the woods yeah it's halfway up a mountain okay yeah so you ran away basically yeah you headed for the hills yeah you were done i did literally head hills you know i've been in new york 38 years and i used to say to friends of mine if i'd murdered somebody i'd have been out in 35 yeah yeah yeah so i got a longer sentence but i love new york yeah no when

the time you knew me i was enjoying it immensely but after you know i don't know 35 years i was done yeah and so uh eventually moved first to brooklyn which then became instantly like new york right i missed the same day i moved in as the moving truck moved away right all the hipsters just a truckload of pickle makers and mustache wax makers i didn't have a problem with it was all of the yuppies yeah i found it's a new oh that park slope thing the original thing yeah this was i was in brooklyn heights was the same thing. Right, right. So then I went to Mississippi for a year, and I taught at Ole Miss. You taught? What did you teach?

I taught journalism badly. There are a lot more bad journalists around now. Don't let anybody teach you, I guess. Yeah, they do. They literally do. So how long were you down there? A year? Just a year?

Yeah. Fantastic year. Really enjoyed it. Loved the South. Let's go back, man. So now, you grew up in London grew up as a kid in London born here in New York City

yeah grew up as a kid from the age of 2 in London until 15 we moved as a family I now had 3 English born siblings yeah

as a larger family we moved back to New Jersey you moved to New Jersey yeah and I was home sick so the first chance I got I left home and went straight back to England so you were all living with your dad in jersey no with my

mother oh my mom and dad had split but oh yeah the family was still close yeah so when penthouse was hitting here he wanted to be here yeah so he moved here and he moved us over and you know but you all sort of got along then oh yeah very much yeah yeah So you grew up in the world of Penthouse. I didn't actually. I grew up outside of it. I grew up with my mom. Yeah, she wouldn't let you in the world of Penthouse. No, he wouldn't.

He smartly curtailed the competition before it got to be real. It kept us from getting in trouble. That magazine seems to have gotten pretty filthy. Yeah, I know. It's a shame i didn't i didn't even i don't even know if it's still publishing actually i don't either but i knew at one point i think i opened a penthouse and i'm like when do they put cocks into things when did that happen we don't want to see it but we it's funny the guys don't want to see it for

that yeah yeah yeah oh they don't want to see it not like uh i mean i don't know do you i don't well no i if i'm going to look at porn but for some reason i always made this separation that uh yeah that those magazines were you know it was sort of surprising it's weird because i'm no stranger to porn yeah you know when you look at penthouse just historically in your mind when you're a kid it was just the pretty girls and yeah and then all of a sudden it's sort of like oh there's no mystery anymore exactly it was a mystery that's what my old man used to always say. Really? About the romance and the mystery. Really? You know,

he pioneered a style of photography based on economics, which was that he offered, when he had no money, he offered 10 pounds an hour for nude models. In England,

that was double, that was the weekly wage. Right. So all his girls were turning up. Yeah. And he would photograph them while they were getting undressed, photograph them for about 20 minutes, say, put your clothes back on, photograph them putting their clothes on.

At 45 minutes, he'd say, we're done. And he'd hand them £7.50. They thought they had a full day of £10. And he did it. And what he created was his voyeurism. Yeah. And it's actually far more exciting to see a woman getting undressed right that to every every male who is sexually active with women it is the moment we know it's going

to happen right right and he just pioneered that whole style so that it was always about romance and mystery and i as opposed to always kept that in my head as a very very important element to to all publishing it whatever the field you know yeah you shouldn't have romance it should have mystery right and and we but you learned publishing from him you think yeah definitely without a doubt yeah i i i did develop eventually my own instincts but but no i i was you know right at what age did you go into like the office and learn the nuts and bolts of that shit oh very early i mean i you know was working i had my own magazine 18 in england what was that there's a step-by-step guide to kung fu really and it sold yes very well it was when

bruce lee had just died thank god it made people interested yeah i made a little money but it was very tiny thing it was england i thought if i'm working this hard i'll go back to america and what year was that so that see that was 1974 the thing is- That was 1974. Right, so it was before, like, cuisine culture became later. So you were actually working in real publishing. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was-

Did you know Kung Fu, or no? No. No, we found a guy who did. Yeah. Chi Su, I remember his name, all these years later. Chi Su. Chi Su. Yeah.

He was an expert, and we just did it move by move. Yeah. But the night before we went to press, my partner and I, this guy Richard and I who had done the book, we'd written it and designed it together. We said we better actually practice these moves to make sure. It was fact checking. Yeah. So all night long, he would throw me, break my arm, I'd break his arm. He wouldn't break it.

We'd get to the point where we'd break, kick each other, punch each other. Right. To see if these worked. And some moves moves no matter how many times we did it we couldn't quite get it right we said ah hell let it go you know it's too late yeah yeah it's it maybe we just don't understand we don't understand it somebody gets it so that was your first taste of publishing that was it yeah then i came back to america and did a uh a rock and roll poster magazine which was a single issue again with a poster now we're doing who is putting the money up for that your old man in the the kung fu thing was my

friend and I you just did it yeah for the princely sum of five thousand pounds yes which did it yeah in America my father backed me for the poster magazine right and that broke even and I was just exhausted so I stopped then I came back and worked for him to launch omni and then i remember omni yeah and a few years after that i i left to write and i got married and i got married and you know you were married once before twice so this is your third marriage today twice before today so you're on your third one no no i'm not married right now oh you're not no no i'm with a woman i've been with for a long time okay uh liza lentini playwright okay i've a very long time uh 12 years yeah but uh no i was married to this woman in england and we got married and i came

back and i a couple years later thought up spin uh-huh and started that not knowing what i was doing you know you do little things that's one thing you do a big magazine that was entirely different well i think it was pretty big but that was your dad's magazine yes that was his that was a science magazine with the first real kind of like cool science magazine. First and last. Oh, yeah? Let's face it, yeah. Oh, yeah?

I like to think when I owned Discover for a couple of years that I made it better. Right. But never made it as good as Omni. Yeah. Because Omni was birthed with this sense of wonder. Right. Discover was not. Right.

By the time it came to me, I was like the fourth owner of it by that point. Discover was not. By the time it came to me, I was like the fourth owner of it by that point. And it was very dull. And it was kind of like trying to inject a bit of enthusiasm and curiosity into it, which we did. We absolutely did. And the magazine did become much more successful while I was there. But it wasn't born with that sense of wonder.

And that was a great thing about Omni. It was open-minded. It was curious. I kind of remember it because i was a kid that was in the 70s yeah yeah because i remember it kind of being a cool magazine i knew i didn't understand it but the oh but i remember the uh the pictures were great like it was like really visual like there was like there was a lot of things to look at in there right but i was sort of a kid but i i knew it was dealing with big it was It was exciting. Yeah, exactly, yeah. That was the subhead, Omni Big Shit.

Okay, so you're in publishing, you burn out after the poster magazine, then you do what? You do Omni for a little while, and then you split for a while? Yeah, well, I segregated from Omni to running the penthouse circulation but then after that i wanted to always wanted to write yeah so i thought well i better stop and actually write right i found out i wasn't a very good writer i mean i think now i've become a little better but it wasn't good then right demonstrably so yeah so that wasn't going anywhere and um one day the idea for spin came to me just came to me i tell story and people never really kind of believe it, but it came to me in less than a second.

It was a vision of the pages literally just floated in front of my eye. I saw the typography. I saw the layout. Lots of white space. We kind of pioneered that look. Certainly, I think maybe in any magazine. On the page. Yeah.

Certainly in a youth culture magazine. Lots of white space. Lots of drama. Tight offset by the pictures. Yeah, Certainly in a youth culture magazine, lots of white space, lots of drama, the tight offset by the pictures, dictating everything. I saw it going across the whole spectrum of music from, you know, obviously the new wave stuff that was hot then that we were listening to, my age group. We would skip past mainstream pop, but we would go into even things

like African music, and, you know, we did that before anybody. And I also saw the non-music element, the quirky being important, which I still think is vital, and investigative journalism. It all came to me at once. The name did not. I had no idea what to call it.

But I could see it all. And then I just got frightened. You know when you get sleep paralysis? You suddenly wake up and you're like, what was that? It must have been a dream. And I thought, well, that's a good idea but i can't do it right you know how do i know how to do it and then didn't think about again six weeks later

and i'm not an early riser i get up i get up at 8 39 that's early yeah i don't like getting up early i woke up bolt upright at six in the morning like in a movie just bolt upright 45 degree angle and this voice said to me you know it's not a it's not up to you it's a vocation right this isn't the question yeah you know you're not being asked would you like this is a vocation yeah and i got up went straight to the office penthouse where i didn't have an office but i found a space that was empty right and i started drawing really and i said and all those ideas came back and i started drawing them out and i still didn't have a name and for for weeks and then one day uh someone said in my office and i was using an analogy i said you know it's all

the way like it's like the way records spin right i went oh spin that's a good name he said ah it sucks well yeah you're right and then two days later i said no that's the right name that's the name yeah and that was it and the the idea for me was that spin if you're spinning you're happy yeah you know it's very subconscious there's none of this is conscious um i'm really conscious as you know because you know me um but this was subconscious that it was meant to be about joy meant to be out happy you were meant to feel elevated and light right you know otherwise what was the point you know it was all about you're at a point in your life when you're supposed to be really really discovering and enjoying right and it was all that was there.

Consciously looking back on it 30 years later, I can tell you what I was thinking. At the time, it was just an instinct. Yeah. This should have fun. It should have humor. What year was that? I forget. It was 1985.

It was 1985. I don't forget. After everything I just remembered, trust me, I didn't forget the year. Do you want the day? You know the day? I know the day of the first issue. March 19th. 1985. Yeah. I can't remember. Was that the Madonna issue? Who was on the day you know the day another day of the first issue went march 19th 1985 yeah like i can't remember was that the madonna issue who was on the cover absolutely yeah madonna was the first cover

that's i think i still have that really like i have the madonna issue and there when was the talking heads that was like shortly after wasn't it yeah that may have been the second issue actually yellow cover right second issue second issue i wonder if i still have that they worth anything yeah go on e. It's amazing. Really? How much did you get? My girlfriend and I looked on eBay one day just for fun. It's like $200 for this.

Get it out of warehouse. Get it out of storage. I got 50 of each copy. We're rich. You don't still have that shit, dude. I do. You do? Yeah.

You know what it was? You have every issue somewhere in boxes? In storage. Yep. Are they archived properly? No. They're just in boxes but each one each box is 50 the printer sent okay so you have a big stack yeah yeah big stack big big yeah um mint i sold the i sold the magazine when the when the storage room got full i said it's over yeah but what but did it did it sell right out of the gate it well it

was small numbers but it did sell. We put small numbers out. And your dad was bankrolling you initially? That was it, yeah. Initially. He did, which was wonderful. He believed in it very much. And in the beginning, we sold very well for what we put out.

Right. And within a few months, we were selling 100,000 or so copies, which doesn't sound like a lot but when you put out 200 it was a lot uh and certainly rolling stone wouldn't have noticed at that point you know they wouldn't have paid any attention well i remember it sort of had some weird credibility like it was kind of not essentially underground but it was like sort of like what is this this is the new thing and who are the guys, I know structurally on some level, as an editor, you knew you had to get a crew in there of writers and guys and women that you could depend on. Who were those original guys?

Well, they were a great bunch. And none of us, myself included, knew what we were doing. Right. And I mean that. We had great ideas. We were good writers. And they were great writers. Who were some of those writers?

Glenn O'Brien. Yeah. James Truman went on to become editorial director of Condé Nast Glen O'Brien is very famous writer now Scott Cohen who was Maybe the most talented of all but he died young unfortunately died just illness in his early 40s a Woman called Jessica Barron's went back to to England she was from England she was James' girlfriend she was brilliant is brilliant I still read her sometimes in the papers

a woman called Sue Cummings who was an intern who we very quickly just said oh you can write this column because you know what you're doing and you know

I know I'm forgetting some people but the early writers included John Leland who's now a big staff writer at the New York Times, one of their best writers, and a guy called Bart Bolt. I'm not sure they were in the first issue.

They were definitely in the second. And the wonderful thing about that in those days, we didn't know what we were doing, but we knew what we liked. And I would read literally the underground press, the Boston Phoenix, the New Times of Arizona, the LA Weekly

you'd read all these and you'd see these great voices and it sounds like a weird metaphor see great voices but you would read great writing

that had a voice and I would just phone them up and say hey you want to write for Spinnaker yeah sure that's cool

and you know we gave them the opportunity to write things that were a little more adventurous and Rolling Stone had not even bothered to take their phone calls, basically.

Right. They were trying to get into Rolling Stone. I'm trying to get them to me. Right. And we were blessed. We were blessed with this fantastic centrifugal force that brought all these great people together. And we had humor. You know, it was very obvious in the beginning.

We were going to have humor. We had a humorous take. We didn't take ourselves seriously. Yeah. You know, and I used to we we kicked the sacred cows did you did you cause any uh major controversy in the first few years yeah oh god like what i can't remember much immediately i'll tell you just quickly um because it's it's a great story but in our third issue we got time right here uh no you know uh everyone's talking about tina Tina Turner in 1985, who was one of the biggest

stars in the world at the time. And she was going on and on, a bit over the top, perhaps, about, I was beaten by Ike. Ike beat me. Did I tell you? Did I mention Ike beat me? Yeah. And so she had, what's love got to do with it? Massive hit, all the rest of it.

But she did think, as did most people, that Ike was dead. But as it turned out, we were having a tour meeting and I said to myself, well, forget it, Tina. Why don't we go find Ike? Right, I think I remember this. Yeah, so this brilliant investigator reporter called Edward Kirsch, who did not return my emails,

for the record, if he's listening, but I said to him, we're doing this 30th anniversary thing, I want you to be part of it. Yeah. Anyhow, he went and found him. It took weeks. And he found him basically homeless in LA.

Really? Yeah, drugged out, homeless, had It took weeks. And he found him basically homeless in L.A. Really? Yeah. Drugged out, homeless, had been in prison. And he finally convinced him to do an interview. And it was a fantastic piece. And that was our fourth issue. Annie Lennox was on the cover. We didn't put Ike on the cover.

Right. Nobody recognized him, right? And we headlined it, What's Ike Got to Do With It? And it absolutely struck people, that spin. You know, Rolling Stone does Tina. Right. That spin does Ike. Right.

And it was still a long time before we were commercially successful, about 300 years, I think. Many years, but that did set the impression right away. But he copped to it. Yes. Yeah. He said famously, if somewhat politically incorrect, he said, sure, I beat Tina, but I didn't beat her any more than the average man beats his wife. That's a real quote.

No. I mean, but that's where he came from. Yeah, sure. Look, we don't forgive, don't excuse that and forgive him. We didn't in the article. But I thought it was important in the article to show his side, number one, and also to show he was more than that man who beat his wife, who was a drug addict. He's sort of a genius.

He invented rock and roll. Yeah. I mean, partly by accident. Rocket 88. Right, exactly. You really know your stuff. Do you know this story? No.

What happened was he was driving to Memphis to do a recording session and the car leaked and water got into his amp. Yeah. When he got there, he and his musicians

set up their equipment and they realized the amp was ruined. Yeah. So he had to take newspaper and wedge it up into little balls under the woofer to stabilize the woofer right when they played the feedback was all very muddy yeah and it was like early grunge right right muddy when he heard that he changed his piano style to a thumping piano style and it became the first rock song right and years later

um yeah little richard copped to the fact that he stole note for note the piano stylings of rocket 88 for tutti frutti no kidding so it really was a great song i'm not even sure we told that story in that article because i don't think we knew it and i don't think you brought it up but um i've since learned the significance of actona it was fun reliving it and i think it's fun for i hope desperately it's fun for, I hope desperately, it's fun for new spin readers learning about some of the stuff that was done before they were born. Well, I think I remember how we actually,

like I know that there was a little piece in the magazine about me with a picture. Right. I think you hired me to write a back page once. Yes, absolutely. That's right. That's sort of how we became friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember now. I thought it was early in those gay baths, but you're right. No, no. The gay baths for me, that was, I don't remember you. You're losing listeners. I'm losing credibility. Excellent. All right.

So that goes to, how long has been your thing? I mean, how long were you there? 12 and a half years. So that was from 85 to 90-whatever. 97, yeah. Now, what was the big schism between you and your father? Well, it's a long story, but the brief and, you know, worthwhile answer to that question is penthouse was rocked by the moral times you know the moral scandals uh you know the four wells the meese commission the meese commission so what mid 80s

yeah it was really the reagan really inspired by reagan's uh administration to clamp down on on on you know pussy pictures yeah exactly yeah you put put it better than i would have yeah um and so this impacted the penthouse company you know by 50 of its revenues which 50 of its oh yeah yeah it cost him two million copies of the number of stores that threw the magazine out and now they were still making money right penthouse but penthouse meanwhile grown into this massive multi-titled company most of which were losing money and one of which was spin which was still you know losing uh startup phase of a couple years so still losing but um penthouse was the only company that's i mean sorry spin was the only division penthouse didn't own

it was done as a um uh you know a a friend franchised so that i would actually own it once i paid back the money penthouse right right which we were on track and doing. But so at that point my father said you have to just give me spin and I said well no. Because he was cutting his losses? Yeah he was he was embarrassed I think that some of these other losing companies you know were losing but they were saying but spins you don't even own spin you're actually winding them up. And so we had a falling out. I said, no, no.

I said, you know, I will pay you back. I will raise money and pay you and give you a profit. Yeah. That's not an issue. Yeah. The issue is you can't, you know, you can't take away that is mine. Right.

We have an agreement. Right. It's based on that agreement. I've honored it all. Right. You have to honor it too. Yeah. I'm going to cancel it. Well, if you cancel it, that's your agreement. Right. You know, it's based on that agreement. I've honored it all the way. Right. You have to honor it too. Yeah. So I'm going to cancel it. So if you cancel it, that's your choice.

Yeah. But then the magazine becomes entirely mine. Right. So he says, but you have no money. I says, but I will find money. Yeah. You know, so why don't you let me find money and pay you back? Right.

And then you'll be happy. Yeah. But if you throw me out. Yeah. You know, I don't owe you anything. Right. So anyway, this went on for a while. And it's father and son dynamics of course in there bro that's the sad thing is the sad thing is not

that he threw me out right we went on of course to do very well the sad thing is we didn't talk for 18 years and we reconciled a few years before he died six years you did you yeah yeah it was beautiful i often tried and he was still too you know stubborn really and uh as fathers are sicilian fathers particularly yeah and then one day he called me up out of blue he actually had somebody call me and say come over for dinner and i thought it wasn't real i thought somebody was just trying to get me to come there he's gonna kill you yeah yeah no i thought he was just going he didn't know about it i thought somebody was just nicely trying to put us together yeah but finally the person called me back and said no no it's really serious he can't

talk he's had throat cancer and he can't talk well on the phone and he's insecure about if you haven't heard his voice for a long time he's insecure about you hearing it but he wants you to come and i thought what i gotta lose i mean the worst is he throws me out right right at the door and i go away but i did go and he embraced me at the door and that was it did you cry oh yeah did he not him not we didn't cry then yeah i did later absolutely because it was just the cries of joy it's so long dude 18 years it's a lifetime it's horrible yeah it is and it's weird and it's tough and you know um i never didn't love him yeah the whole time i believe he never didn't love me yeah he had his stubbornness and and I, to a degree, had mine.

Pride. Yeah, exactly. He's a fucker. Before the fall, baby. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm so happy we reconciled. And so was he, and I was with him when he died. And, you know, we really, really got back to being very close.

What a fucking relief. Totally. Totally, absolutely. Imagine if that went on and he died and you didn't fix that. Yeah, exactly. I used to tell myself, look, if he dies and we don't reconcile, that's okay. That's life. But you know what?

That wouldn't have been the way I felt. But you know what's right? Right? Oh, God damn. Well, good for you, man. Well, good for him. He finally opened the door and it was wonderful. And you weren't even expecting it.

No, no, not at all. And you have other siblings too. I do, yeah. And you don't get along with them? For the record, I get along with them. You never had kids? I haven't. I still want them.

Really? I still want them, yeah. What are you going to do about that? Well, I'm going to have to find a way of doing that. We want them. Yeah? I mean, I want them, and, you know, so we'll have them at some point. So now, like, in the history of spin you got in

trouble a few times yeah like a like i i like i was trying to yeah i was trying to wrap my head around because you you know you had a certain swagger at some point as i recall for about an hour or two yeah in my moments well what the fuck happened i mean did you did you you never lost did you lose the magazine no at one point no no no no well you got in trouble for what sexual harassment no well we got sued the company did um and because of my name being famous not because of me but yeah my father uh there was an attempt to i call it legally blackmail us to settle right and i said no i'm not going to do it and i could have got

out for a fifth of what i paid to defend the suit but i said you know i will never feel good about myself giving in to this blackmail i said we didn't do anything wrong what was the case it was a hostile environment case you know this was very popular from one one person was suing you yeah well actually a lawyer went out trawling for ex-employees. Those motherfuckers. Oh, yeah. And I've pointed out since, you know, many times I've pointed out that in those years, we were just about the only magazine that wasn't a woman's magazine that had women editors

and women staff writers who got a salary just right and a ton of women contributors. I said, we have more bylines by women than any magazine being published in america from time through down to except for women's magazines which of course were written in time by women but um so we gave a lot of first chances you know elizabeth gilbert famous writer now i was her first boss and i found her and hired her and made her a staff writer right in the beginning. And there's dozens more like that. So I resisted this attempt to just get us to pay off a few hundred grand just because somebody wanted to make a career.

Right. I said, no, bring it. We went to court. We won. You know, we prevailed completely. And the law firm almost went out of business. And they actually got rid of it. I think they got rid of the lawyer.

She said she left. And what was the other trouble? No more. Oh, I mean, you know actually got rid of it. I think they got rid of the lawyers. You said you left. And what was the other trouble? Oh, I mean, you know, I was always politically incorrect in terms of the music industry. And, you know, we expose a lot of people. Well, one of the great articles we did, and we'll run this too, I think, is... You're still in the process of editing this thing. Yeah, yeah. You just started?

How long have you been going? A couple of months. So what are you doing? You're putting them up online as you sort of put them thing. Yeah, yeah. You just started? How long have you been going? A couple of months. So what are you doing? You're putting them up online as you sort of put them together? Yeah. We know what they're going to be now. We have a couple of open slots.

We're not quite sure, but one of them should be the... You know, do you remember Guns N' Roses? Yeah. Of course. You remember the band, but at a certain point of their popularity, and Spin was the very first

to ever write about them. I remember the article that you wrote. I remember there was a piece that turned me on to Guns N' Roses because I was living in an attic in Somerville, Massachusetts, probably 88 or 89, and I think that someone in Spin wrote a piece about how the album was released and it didn't sell, and then all of a sudden it was rediscovered.

Isn't that how it worked with them? They put it out to nothing. And then I think Spin Magazine decided it was the greatest rock and roll record around. We said it was one of the best albums of the year. And we nominated them as one of the ten artists to watch in the next year. And they went unnoticed, basically.

Absolutely. They were unnoticed. They think they may have been dropped. But they were not going anywhere. But anyway, a couple of years later, they're a big, big bang. Right. And so they sent out a contract to every media outlet that said, if you want to interview us, you have to agree that we control the interview. We edit it. We write the captions.

And if you change any of that, you have to give us $100,000. And we own it, by the way. You don't own it. What? So every, you know, self-respecting. Was that some Axl shit or what? Oh, I'm sure it was. I mean, who knows?

But anyway, we, everybody who meant real journalism said when I signed that, so one of my editors said, Bob, you should write an editorial about this. I said, no, let's publish the contract. Yeah.

We printed the contract, showed what idiots they were. Yeah. And as we were going to press, literally as the cover was leaving the art department to go to the messenger to take it to the airport,

I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, add this line of text to the very top, how to get your own Guns N' Roses interview, page nine,

or whatever it was. Right. And that was it. We typeset that, we added that, the messenger waited, and then he took it off, right?

Yeah. Well, 10,000 kids took it seriously, signed the contract and and mailed it into Guns N' Roses' office. I just meant it as like sort of quite frankly, fuck you to Guns N' Roses. But the kids took it seriously. So they were now deluged with box upon box arriving daily of signed contracts, mail. Were they legal? I signed it.

When can I have this interview? They were embarrassed, and they had to write back and say, no, this isn't the way it works. At that point, I said to my staff, I said, find out who this guy is. Just go to Indiana. No, no. Find out who Axel Rose is.

We've just taken him as Axel Rose, but he wasn't born Axel Rose. He had a life in Indiana. So we sent a reporter out. And the reporter did like an investigative piece, as you would do on a politician running for the presidency. And found out he was a bit of a prick, frankly.

And that was a great piece. And after that, he wrote that song, Get in the Ring, which he challenges me to a fight and all that shit. Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, he challenged me and Andy from Hit Parader and one or two other writers. Hit Parader. But he really goes on to the chorus about, you know, you weren't getting as much pussy as your dad

and blah, blah, blah. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. You know, your wimp getting in the ring. Well, at the time, I was studying full contact karate. Four times a week, I got in the ring. So I was way into it for many years at that point. I think when I knew you, I was way into it. many years at that point you know I think when I knew you I was way into it and so I just called up

Geffen Records and said well when when do you want to do that it's fine by me and I promoted it because it helped sell magazines right sure

I didn't want to fight him yeah I was glad there never was a fight it would have been pointless in the end he backed down

he said I'm not fighting him blah blah, blah, blah. But the point was, A, I'm not going to let somebody call me out. Yeah, sure. And B, certainly not in a song. And C, it sold some magazines, and I had fun with it. Well, that's interesting, because I'd forgotten there was all those magazines that preceded Spin that were pretty great rock magazines, like Cream.

Yeah, the old Cream. The old Cream was great. Right. Crawdaddy. Circus was that one? Circus was great. Circus became kind of like just a sort of MTV heavy metal. Right, right.

Echo. Crawdaddy and Cream. The original Circus was, you know, back in the early 70s, was a real magazine, you know. Did you ever work with that? And the Granddaddy and what was Rolling Stone. I mean, that really was the first countercultural magazine. Now, when Spin started to pick up speed, did you ever have words with Jan Wenner?

Oh, often. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. In the press, we would poke each other. And then we'd run into each other somewhere and have a chat. How are you? How's your family? What's going on?

Right. Did you see the Mellencamp show? I thought I saw you there. It was very nice and cordial, and he was always very gracious. I hope he thinks I was gracious. And then the next day, back in the press, going, ah, Rolling Stone's full of shit. Right.

Ah, spin's meaningless. And then we'd run each other at Michael's restaurant in New York. How are you? How are you, Bob? It was business. Pure business. Yeah. This isn't personal.

Yeah, yeah. This is just business. Right. Words before dying. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah so now you're in town now wait where do you like there's a couple of issues we talked about i mean in terms of of where the world is now and what publishing really means now because it seems to me that one thing that's been did and i think rolling stone did it but with a little more type of, there was a kind of a class-ish, you know, they postured.

But I mean, it seemed that the agenda of Spin initially was to sort of, like you said, be open-minded, embrace all new forms of music, you know, integrate, you know, the whole landscape of music and pop culture that was relevant relevant and and and also journalistic into this one magazine which rolling stone kind of did but had been drifting so what do you think you inspired what do you think the meaning of spin you know now is to people i mean because i know it's it's no longer a published magazine right but what do you feel like when you think about spin what did you contribute to the world of publishing? Well, that's a lovely question. Nice. I mean, I appreciate the implication behind the question. I do think we contributed a lot. And I think I perhaps guided that effort. Yeah.

I wanted to be honest with the reader. And I don't know how much you get that these days. Frankly, I hate to say it. We live in a clickbait culture. Yeah. And also politically correct. Nothing can ever be anything but politically correct. You know, there's only one opinion, the prescribed opinion.

For the most part, there's a faceless momentum. Oh, yeah, it's gutless. It's gutless, but it's also impulsive. And what's interesting to me is I think about it more because I'm becoming mildly obsessed with some of this. Me too. I interviewed the president, though, and he said something interesting about the incremental growth of democracy that that nothing happens in a democracy

overnight now and I think a lot of what people are getting set up yeah you know it's just a very slow process and and the weird thing is about gay marriage or anything else or even what you know I think politically correct is also a buzzword for for defending something that I think if you really investigate it uh personally it might not be worth defending on some level. The idea of political correctness is certainly troublesome sometimes if it's misused. But a lot of times people, you know, there is a growth period like gay marriage, right? There's a lot of people who are not religious fanatics that are uncomfortable with gay marriage. And they're like, oh, fuck, the fags are going to get married.

What's the world coming to? But 10 years from now, those same people very likely would be like, eh, who cares? Exactly right. Those exact same people, yeah. Right. So it evolves into sort of like, I guess, what are you going to do? It's fine. They don't have to agree with it ultimately.

And they can hold their opinion. But ultimately, culture has to evolve. Right. And it's just a slow process. You're very right but you know what i i have an issue with political correctness which is i think it's an intellectual and emotional societal cultural laziness and cowardice because i was on a panel once with hunter thompson and um you know when he was still together no no i didn't know him at the age of five you know

and this was a panel uh he was still alive clearly uh but he was way drunk at nine in the morning we're in yu doug brinkley was running it alan ginsburg was on the panel it was supposed to be about the beat generation and i was literally on the wrong panel i mean i was asked to be on it but i wasn't in the beat generation but anyway under thompson's talking he's saying american indians american indians and there's a woman in the front row. She kept going, Native Americans. Native Americans. So finally, I said, Hunter, may I interrupt?

I said, you know, you want to call them Native Americans. Does anybody here know? There was 1,000 plus people in NYU auditorium. I said, does anybody realize that this is the exact year that most of the land leases the American government bought from the Indians come up. They're actually now, the land reverts legally to the American Indian. I said, so we can argue about calling them Native Americans or American Indians, but let me just posture this. Who here wants to pay more taxes so the government can buy that land legally in the many tens of

billions of dollars that it is now worth so it's going to cost us the people the taxpayers many tens of billions more than we pay in taxes so who's for it and a room of a thousand three hands went up i said well i appreciate you doing i think you're lying but even if you're not good for you but that's the only thing that matters what do you think an american indian cares you've got a native american give them the money for their damn land right their land we took it yeah it was time for us to bet it was the exact year most of them didn't even know the issue no of course no no of course nobody all knew the issue about the name change and you know i've always my back goes up my hair goes on edge when i hear this faux you know faux cultures faux

revolution phoniness gets me i don't want to i don't want to sound so you know strident but i am on this issue perhaps and you know as an editor all my life now which is you know 40 years of being a professional editor off and on um mostly on i've always striven for that truth when i had discover magazine i had editors quit because i did articles they found politically incorrect like what well very early on the whole climate um change debate we published an interview with um bjorn logstrom i think his name is who was then recognized as one of the leading climatologists in the world. I mean, people didn't do anything without checking with him first. And he said in

this interview, he said, you know, we don't really have great data on climate change. We haven't really been looking for it. He said, but ironically, in my lab, we've been looking at something for seven years, every minute of the day, every second of the day for seven years. And it's sunspot activity. He says, in actual fact, we found a correlation of 100% between sunspot activity and the Earth's temperature. So solar storms, when they are directed at the Earth, because of course they're also not directed at the Earth, but when they're directed at the Earth, influence the temperature, 100% correlation, 100%. It's parallel lines for seven years. He says, so clearly, we're warming up,

but the sun has a lot to do with it. Well, I had an editor literally quit, and others threatened to quit. They didn't. This was what year? At Discover in the year 2006 or 2007. And I remember saying to this group, I had to call it I said listen

let me tell you something first of all the magazine is publishing this article word for word and I'm final editing top editing it but it's not

you're not denying climate change no of course not no no no in the slightest you're not denying the postulation of human responsibility for it

but you're presenting I'm presenting another science some science and I said to them in this meeting I said science the actual definition of science is to prove a theory wrong. You know, there are people, Jeremy Lee once said this to me.

There are scientists who say we haven't really proven gravity. Because if you talk to the physicists who talk about many dimensions, they say gravity is too weak to be actually a force in the universe. So it's one of the forces, but there are others. So, I mean, there's that kind of open-mindedness to science that makes science fantastic. And here were a bunch of science editors and writers sitting around complaining and stamping their little feet because this was a politically incorrect thing to publish.

So they didn't want to be associated with climate change denying. Right, it was even before the phrase came up. Right. It was that early. So I said, listen, I said, the truth is the truth. And the truth about science is that it's never black and white. I said, so why is it that only one set of voices should be heard?

I said, we know, we know from hearing from scientists. I said, you know, because they told you. But there's another group, by the way, very credible, who have another point of view. That has to be included. So, yeah, I'm not scientist. I said, you know, because they told you, but there's another group, by the way, very credible, who have another point of view. That has to be included. So, yeah, I'm not a denialist. You know what I am? I'm a hysteria skeptic.

Yeah. And when he gets hysterical, I saw Al Gore give his presentation that became the movie, The Inconvenient Truth, at TED back in 2005, 2006, February 2006. It's the first time he'd ever given it. In fact, he kind of said, oh, I hope I get this right. Yeah, he's riffing.

Yeah, he's riffing. And it was a brilliant presentation. And I turned to my editor who was next to me and I said, tomorrow, start investigating this. He says, why? Everything is right. There wasn't a single rebuttal to anything.

He just has one theory and he presents evidence only for that one theory that's not possible it's just physically not possible there has to be other this is before we did the beyond interview i said it has to be other views i said he's a lawyer he's advocating his case this editor didn't want to do it he didn't stay much longer uh he left to his own volition and then i started hiring people to look into it. And of course, there was another side, and that is science. We wouldn't have gotten anywhere if people weren't challenging things.

So it struck me that we've become intellectually and emotionally lazy and spiritually lazy. But also the issue of the evolution of publishing, the reality of the Internet, the monetization of what you grew up in and what your father grew up in, of units and the power of a magazine or of that type of report. Well, magazines had exclusive audiences. Right. We don't have that now. Well, now we don't have any, hardly any context at all. And it seems that, you know, sort of some of the stuff you're talking about, about this

immaturity, reactionary thinking, you know, contempt and attack prior to investigation is sort of the outlet of almost anybody. The internet has provided access for anybody to comment on anything anonymously, quickly, and possibly destroy people. Right, absolutely. So somebody like yourself who has lived through personal attacks and being crucified for other reasons and also been in the ring journalistically.

There's got to be – how do you sort of reconcile the evolution of DIY publishing, internet access, lack of boundaries personally and otherwise, and this sort of destructive force that that is. I mean, you know, we have an entire generation that is indicative of what you're saying, you know, spiritually, morally, and intellectually bankrupt or lazy. Or both, yeah. Yeah, that are really going to dictate the course of culture. I mean, I've been doing some reading. For a while.

Okay. For a while. Let's go back to what Obama said so brilliantly. You know, democracy grows slowly. Incrementally. Incrementally. He did say it better than me. Incrementally. And slowly, that means. Well, so does media. You know, you go back

to the early 1900s. Newspapers were as out there as the internet is today. There was no regulations. There was no sense of what could be liable or slanderous whatever sold is what they printed uh and we evolved as a media to bring in the notion of slander and libel and say you know really you just you have to not act this way um and you know the rampant untruth that was the core of media 100 years ago did have to be mollified and, you know, taken care of so that it wasn't forever.

There had to be some sort of regulations and laws. Right. And structure. And, by the way, and then it got calib and by the way and then the sort of it got calibrated by the people's reaction eventually people said you know what this is this isn't the whole story right this is unfair and you know i make up my own mind but so media change you know from those very tabloidy newspapers that make today's papers look like the you know the hymnal at mass um so that that's not a new story in a way. We have a new technology, so it's a new story for our generation.

And I think it's going to eventually again recalibrate. People are going to get tired of this. I think people can get tired of the bashing. You know, we've become very similar. We don't like to hear this. We don't like to think about this. But today, we are very similar to the Taliban. We have one prescribed opinion.

There's no deviating from that. We stone people to death as a mob, a faceless mob, cowardly mob stoning someone to death. Let me give you the most recent example. It's on both sides, though. There are two opinions, but the result is just more bashing. Yeah, more bashing. You're right. There's no debate. There's no real debate, no honest debate right there's only this you're wrong

and you're obviously a nazi and then some spin yeah because it comes from the other side you're wrong and you're obviously a god was he then who wants to kill babies right exactly and you know it's you see it's very easy therefore intellectually lazy to say i'm for this x right um and somebody else says well yeah i'm totally for that oh you're an evil person you know totally for that you fill in x it can be marriage equality it can be sexism it can be uh you know gender discrimination it can be all sorts of things but whatever it is i always say in reality there are two sides yeah uh maybe one side is 75 80 undeniably the best way to go and maybe the other side it'll take a while for everybody to come to that but you know you should hear it and and there are real concerns and we should hear this but one

thing you're open to it it's but the weird thing is is once people or ideas are destroyed that frame that the hunger for for sort of um aggravated justice and closure in the form of a predatory uh journalism if you're going to even call it that is that you know once that frame is set the retraction or the the sort of um the the the the gaining back of one's reputation is not as much of a story. Yeah, exactly. How about this? How about the poor Nobel Prize winning scientist, England,

somebody, Hunt, Dr. Hunt, Professor Hunt, whatever. I can't remember his first name. Nobel Prize winning, 72 years old, universally loved in the scientific community, happened to have been, from the early days, a great advocate of bringing women along in the laboratory brought many students in uh helped them become full-fledged scientists this was not always the case say 30 40 years ago especially not in england um and he has done this

and then he makes a joke at a conference and he says the problem with women in labs is that we fall in love with them they fall in love with us and they cry when you criticize them for which he lost every one of his professorships at university all his income he was destroyed reputation wise he was destroyed employment wise for that one remark which if you break it down is hardly inflammatory you know people say it was a silly remark well i'm not even totally sure it climbs to the bar of stupid i think it was obviously an in you know an inappropriate remark but but he is destroyed in that you know he you know no matter how good he was to women his ideas of the dynamic of men and women was old you know what i'm not even gonna say it's

inappropriate retract it's not inappropriate i don't think it's inappropriate yes it's well it it's it is it is old yes because today the culture is a little different but um the offense taken was that they cry at criticism well you know a lot of people cry at criticism men and women uh and if the worst thing said about me in my life was that I cried at criticism, which, by the way, I have done. I remember once my father criticized me when I was a young man, for something I had done,

and I did cry. But it's interesting. But I don't know if that's the worst criticism you can have. But he prefaced the comment by, you know, we fall in love with each other, so then it becomes an emotional relationship. He met his wife in the lab. Right, but it becomes an emotional relationship,

so it's not about the criticism. See, like, if you really deconstruct that what he said, you know, as far as men and women in relationships go, if he said that outside of the context of the lab, but he set it up properly, which is that the relationship has been convoluted

by emotion. Right. Exactly. That's horrible. And he's destroyed. Destroyed. You know, no universe. They all dropped him within a matter of weeks. Newspapers like The Guardian beat on him five articles a day, four articles a day. To sell papers. Yeah.

What is it to sell online clicks, by the way? Because it was online. See, but that's the problem. How do you fucking reconcile that shit? I mean, at least with a paper, there was a little time in between. Yeah. So maybe someone could get a fucking word in. Right.

Exactly. Well, I read a lot of these articles because I was so horrified by this and I read the comments and the people would just be, you know, he should be thrown out, we should take him from the record, take away his Nobel Prize. The man didn't say anything terrible. Let's face it, let's just be real. It's not

a terrible comment. He didn't call them sluts. Did you write an editorial? Did you do anything? No, I don't have the outlet right now. If I had, it's been underwritten in the editorial immediately. But I just want to counter that with the same paper about two weeks earlier

did a news item which said that a woman barrister in England was found to have lied about her ex-boyfriend raping her. And the boyfriend was in jail and had gone to jail for this accusation of rape. Ex-boyfriend. And so they said, well, you know, now she's going to be prosecuted and she'll go to jail.

And he got released. There wasn't a single word again, not a single editorial saying, hey, that's pretty bad. You know, let's just, we beat up. What did that guy give up? I don't know. He gave up his life. His life can never be the same again. But I'm saying, look, that's pretty bad. You know, let's just, we beat up. What did that guy give up? Yeah, I don't know. He gave up his life. His life can never be the same again. But I'm saying, look, that happened.

That's not the Guardian's fault. But where is your indignation about that wrong? Well, that's not a politically correct wrong because it involved something. It's just not in the political correct sphere. It's a bit of a frightening thing. It's very frightening because I don't know. It'll take years for that. Did i answered your question a moment ago it will take many years for that to

that bad toxin to filter through the digestive system of our society eventually it will and we will excrete it and then we'll get back to a nice balance i think that the internet is coming out of the phase of novelty i think we've had it now 20 years the you know some people had it longer you know i mean it goes back probably 20 but 95 is when people started but it's just people sitting at work looking for headlines and now you get these you know these 20 something journalists quote unquote journalists who are assigned to dig into a story even if it's a pre-existing story to find something salacious in order to tag it with right exactly and then that becomes social media that becomes the dialogue yeah currency yeah and that's because it clicks

back to the site which clicks to advertising clicks but how do you stop that it's just it's it's too big a question to answer because i don't know how it's a morbid fascination and fucking you know and it's it's malignant well it fucking, you know, and it's malignant. Well, it is. And, you know, I think it's more destructive than we realize because I think it hurts us spiritually. And I also think it hurts us intellectually. Well, it creates a culture of self-censorship that stifles. It creates ignorance. It creates and nourishes ignorance.

Because after a while, if that's what you're fed, that's what you believe. It creates and nourishes ignorance. Because after a while, if that's all you're fed, that's what you believe. And, you know, to get back to something you asked me a little while ago, I think spin was a vanguard. I think we represented our generation. I used to tell my editors, we work for our readers. We represented them.

We guided them. That was an obligation to do and also a sacred duty for us. I don't see much of that in today's media um and you know i think it can come best from counterculture publishing like spin now which is only online but they have the opportunity to do this and i'm talking to these guys a lot and saying hey you know god do big so i want them to do a big story on bill cosby i said go do the big story let's have both sides okay look clearly we're going to conclude by his own words that he gave drugs to women, and that's clearly uncool. But, you know, I want a context.

It's a little worse than uncool. Yes, no, no, it's terrible. It's terrible. But, you know, and I'm not looking to in any way exonerate him, but I'm saying what is the story? Who is Bill Cosby? How is he going to? See, the thing is, it's like the first, not the first rock star,

one of the first rock stars of TV. Of comedy. I talk to comics about it all the time, how they are trying to reconcile the influence he had on comedy and on them as a comic with this reality. But how is he ever going to talk about it? You think he can get somebody to forget? No, I don't think he'll talk.

I think... Well, by the way, this purpose of this story that I'm suggesting is simply for Spin to re-imprint itself on the public dialogue. How do you pitch that story? What do you assign? I would assign, because it's not my magazine now, but I would assign who was the young Bill Cosby

of this time. He was, in effect, an out-of-control rock star. He was the Mick Jagger of television. Forget comedy. I Spy was the biggest show at the time. It was a very big show, him and Robert Culp. And he was the first leading character on a TV show who was black. And he was very handsome, and he was an athlete, he was a tennis player, all that.

So he was a rock star. Well, I'm not saying this exonerates him. I'm just saying, give us a story. Because do you know, he was a rock star. Well, I'm not saying this exonerates him. I'm just saying, give us a story. Because do you know what? An awful lot of people reading about Bill Cosby have no idea, except for the little blurb that said he was the Cosby show. He's got an interesting trajectory, and it's a flawed one. It's Greek tragedy.

It's Greek tragedy, but at least Greek tragedy gives you an arc. You have to go farther back than his success. I mean, you know, to sort of act out on a desire to have sex with incapacitated women. I have a theory. My theory is he has a performance issue. Well, sure. Okay. I mean, you wouldn't psychopathologize him.

I'm not excusing this, but I think he probably has some physical image impediment, and that's how he compensated. That's my theory. But the point is journalism journalism should be more complete it shouldn't just be one top line and then everybody has to get behind that and push it like a rock up a hill i think journalism tells us about ourselves at its best but the interesting thing journalistically is if the investigation into not even empathetically, but to try to put him into context or somehow not even explain, but make understandable his crime. I just want to fill out the biography. Right.

So. So. But still, like what you don't get in that story is justice. It's not. Not that that's necessary. It's not reachable in this case and those controversial stuff it's been over the years was the aids column right which is incredibly controversial because you guys ran it every week i mean you were in the middle of it every month yeah for

120 issues and we never once had to publish a correction we got our facts right i mean i agree with our opinions i remember what started with azt right that's such great memory you got man phenomenal yeah we we were the first people to say hey look azt is worse than aids because azt is guaranteed to kill you there are people living with aids and there are people living with hiv who haven't developed aids but you take azt you will die in one to two years as a result of our journalism we actually um brought about the pretty much international uh media paying attention to the story and coming to the same conclusion which brought about the end of prescribing azc right it was it was a it was an old cancer drug on the shelf that got abandoned because it was too deadly right uh and then when aids came up they said these people gonna die

anyway let's try this let's see if it's see if it works and it became a great seller because they had no research cost and desperate people and desperate people it's a perfect storm so the stuff i'm actually proudest of is the azt articles we ran and some of the aids columns we ran that was all very controversial stuff but i think you know going back to just personality journalism even you know context teaches us about ourselves we learn from that kind of narrative and biography where's the arc of a narrative that's what's important that's what's missing and part of that is the immediacy of the web as a business dictates people must get out there fast yeah and get the whole get a story in 1988 i went on the jesse jackson campaign yeah and i uh did an article about jesse jackson campaign yeah and i uh did an article about

jesse jackson and i was doing a monthly magazine article so i wasn't filing my report after each campaign stop and i kept on the plane the full day and i saw four or five campaign stops and i realized he not only said the same thing but he had the exact same gimmicks at the exact same time somebody brought a little act yeah an act exactly. It was an act. Exactly right. It's like when you were doing stand-up, you did your act, and you had your same little motions and your same moments when you caught the crowd. You want to try to riff a little. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking riff one or two bits.

But it was an act, and it was preordained, and I wrote about that. And the others didn't because they had to file a report. What he said in Sacramento this minute, that was 1988 before the internet. Right. Because of the immediacy, the urgency to publish. Well, today with the internet, that's amplified by 10. Well, what happens is it doesn't function in linear time. No.

It's everything all at once. Right. And a day is, you know, like anything that gets traction in the media, you know, they know it's like, well, this thing probably doesn't have legs. It's going to burn out. It's going to be a global hashtag for 48 hours, and then it's done. And then can you find some more sordid shit on this? Because we'd like to make it go another two or three days

with some clickbait. That's exactly right, yeah. Whereas what you're talking about is when you had a monthly magazine or even a weekly column in a newspaper or an investigative piece that required time is that you had the time to do it and there was none of this sort of like well people are going to forget what do you mean it was last week exactly it's over exactly yeah so

where's the context that's exactly my point and the context is what nourishes us as a society it's what enriches us it's the nuance it's the ability to say you know yeah all right this person you know today what would happen to president kennedy today in social media when he got known for his first affair right you know i mean there's a lot more went on with that man he didn't do everything wrong he did some good things and that's perhaps a bit extreme example and now the only reason that people look for the arcs you're talking about is to create a stronger rope to hang somebody with usually well so you've got two sides

I mean the idea that there's only one point of view I think is not quite I don't quite agree with what you're saying there are conflicting opinions there is you know a sort of cultural momentum on one side or the other but both of them are looking to tear the other one down and to tear the other one down

and to tear the other one's heroes down. So anyone's going to investigate what you want in the arc. You're looking to sort of like, well, who is Bill Cosby? And most people, no one's looking to defend that guy, obviously, but everybody's looking to hang him higher. That's right. No, I know you're not, but the idea of creating at least that unbiased, balanced reporting around it so people can at least see the fucking sicko as a human.

Right. And not just this guy that was a big star. Because here's the tricky thing with that is that you've got people that grew up with this comedy, and you can't take that away from people. All a person can do who loved Bill Cosby is reconcile in his own heart and mind and live with it. Now, does that individual then say, like, well, none of his comedy is any good anymore? It's a hard thing to say. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's true.

You're actually saying something very interesting because you're saying these people are going to get airbrushed out of history. That's right. And they want to airbrush him out of their mind. It's the political correct element. It's like not only does he get airbrushed out of their mind is the political correct element it's like not only does he get airbrushed out of history you have to erase

your mind that's right it's very well put very well put and that's not good for us as cultural society it's just not good for us no it's not good for humans

you know one of the worst human beings apparently according to history I mean according to reports of people who knew him

was Picasso yeah the man who left his own children standing outside the gate because he was in the middle of either having sex or painting. Either one, didn't matter.

He wouldn't interrupt either for his children. And yet, what are we going to do? Like, not appreciate Picasso's painting and his impact on art? You know, there are a lot of people. Faulkner, apparently, who's my favorite writer, William Faulkner, but he was an awful drunk, terrible with his kids.

Once said to his daughter, no one remembers William Shakespeare's daughter. And it's a pretty bad thing to say to your child, you know. And when I spent time in Oxford, I became very close friends with Dean Faulkner, who was William's niece, who William raised. And of course, I heard a lot more stories. He didn't sound like a nice guy. Greatest, perhaps the greatest American writer of all time. You know, we are a richer country for Faulkner writing what he wrote and that influencing other writers we're we're a holistic culture you know well that's like it's interesting that like because that's true you know you have great men that did great things and great women that did great things that may be morally dubious characters so so you know i think it's within the human spirit

to to for each individual to have a way to to balance the two or to have their judgments. Right. But I think where you're talking about is the way any sort of ideology, whether it's the political correct side or the right wing side, is historical revisionism, which is fundamentally fascistic. Right. Is that you have to erase the collective memory. Yeah. What did the communists do in the East? Mm-hmm.

You know? What do they do in places like Czechoslovakia? It's an imperative of power on either side, is to annihilate the history. I agree. Yeah. I mean, which is, by the way, the important role, the sacred role of journalism is to arrest that progress. So it's democracy.

Yeah, absolutely. Supposedly. of journalism is to arrest that. So it's democracy. Yeah, absolutely. Well, democracy, everybody will agree on this, is founded on free speech, free exchange of ideas, and the ability for all of that information to be available. You know, look, I love the internet, by the way,

and I love internet media. My next venture is going to be an online publication about travel called Wanderust i'm excited about incredibly excited about it uh as excited as my current venture with the the bookazine that you have in front of you and we have many more copies coming up many more issues i'm excited both those things equally i love the internet i love the fact that you can reach more people more easily by the medium of the internet why how come why you should be saving journalism bob i mean well i want to i want to oh well yeah i don't think

my travel site is going to save journalism um but hopefully it's going to work okay you know but uh no i would love very much to all seriousness i'd love very much to be part of an effort to save journalism and i and i hope other people feel that way because it's vital. It's the oxygen of a society. And journalism, with all due respect to the Gorkas and Buzzfeeds of the world, is not the thing that is most salacious, most get right up your nose that moment. It's not the cocaine of salacious tabloidy news. It actually should be holistic.

It should be a lot of things. And I don't just mean that in the sort of, oh, it's got to be pure and, you know, name of the father and the son and all that. Oh, look, I like entertainment journalism. You do. This is entertainment journalism. Right now, your show.

And, but, but, the truth is the truth. And the truth is whole. And it's full. And I think we're all served better by being able to see it whole and full. And sometimes it takes time to get at it. Yeah, it does, it does, it does. And ultimately, I believe this will settle, and even the Internet will take time. All right.

Well, I will take that as an optimistic look at the possibility of incremental growth and for us to uh to level off and and uh and and and and take the time to have our own thoughts and opinions about things based on truth yes yes how well put thank you so much for having me thanks for talking so that's bob guccioni back on top of it. Doing the thing. Making a living. Being Bob Guccione Jr. What's up? We all right?

Go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. Get some JustCoffee.coop. To get the WTF blend, I got a little something on the back end. Check the calendar. Get on the mailing list. I'll send you a thing. You can check my dates. You can read the blog post. You can listen to the episode. Get on the mailing list. I'll send you a thing. You can check my dates.

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