Joe Ambrose Interview
Now based in Marrakesh, Joe Ambrose is an Irish writer of fiction and non-fiction. He has written about moshpits (Moshpit Culture) and punk icon Iggy Pop (Gimme Danger.) In fact, the third edition of Gimme Danger has recently been published via Omnibus Press. His website is www.joeambrose.net.
Can you give me a potted history of your writing career?
I used to work as a journalist in Ireland years ago. In that context I interviewed Nina Simone, Bill Wyman, Nick Cave, the Irish Prime Minister Charlie Haughey, and a lot of others. I gave that up to manage a punk rock band, the Baby Snakes. I moved to London with them almost 20 years ago where I squatted in Brixton. This was a pivotal time in my life. I’d always been hugely influenced by black music and culture. In Brixton I got the chance to bury myself in reggae and to observe at close quarters the emergence of hiphop. My time in Brixton provided the backdrop to my first novel, Serious Time. This came out with Pulp Books, run by Elaine Palmer, who were publishing new sort of hip fiction. Elaine now runs the lineal descendant to Pulp Books called pulp.net. She also published my second novel, Too Much Too Soon, which reflected on my time as a student radical and my life as a jobbing journalist in Dublin. Since then I’ve written a batch of books; two rock books (Moshpit Culture and Gimme Danger, which is a life of Iggy Pop), three books on Irish history, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan which is extreme travel writing concerning that iconic hotel. I just saw it described on Youtube as the worst book yet about the Chelsea. I am particularly fond of it, and think it’s a big deal. In addition I’ve written a lot of short fiction for a variety of anthologies and quite a lot of online commentary for outsideleft.com, where I’m Literary Editor.
You write fiction and non-fiction, which gives you the most pleasure?
Fiction gives me the most pleasure and pain. Fiction, especially short stories, takes forever to finish. I’ve been working on one short story for twenty years and it’s nowhere near finished yet. Non fiction often serves a more practical purpose (such as making a bit of money or getting an important point across) but I got phenomenal pleasure out of researching and writing Moshpit Culture. Chelsea Hotel Manhattan falls somewhere between fiction and fact.
Tell me about your biography of Iggy Pop Gimme Danger? It’s been given some harsh criticism from certain fans and critics.
I don’t know that it has received much harsh criticism from critics because a critic is someone in the business of reviewing or assessing art or literature or whatever. The harsh criticism you’re talking about comes from disgruntled Iggy fans in the main who don’t like the negative things I had to say about him. People who read rock bios are mainly morons and they just want to read heroic propaganda about their “heroes”. I’m not that kind of writer. Also you’re thinking about one guy really, an Australian who does a website. He’s pissed off because the book used some material which first appeared on his site without acknowledgement or permission. He has a (very small) point in that regard.
I lost control of that Iggy book during the editorial process. I began working on it with Chris Charlesworth at Omnibus Press who is a good guy but he switched me over to another editor called Andy something who kept rewriting the book behind my back and who is a treacherous heap of shit. I made the mistake of signing off on the book without reading the final manuscript. I told Chris this the day that I signed off on it. I told him I was just signing off on it because I knew that they wanted it out in time for the Christmas market. This was a mistake.
I don’t think it’s a very good book. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I’ve more or less disowned it. All of that is a shame as I could, in an alternative universe, have written a much better book about the subject. BUT: it’s all a long time ago now.
Incidentally the Australian wrote his thing about how I’m on his shitlist in defence of his hero and in the hope that he could sink my book. It has now gone into its third edition and, also, Iggy likes it. He liked it so much that he requested me to write the sleevenotes for an official Iggy and the Stooges DVD package, Escaped Maniacs, which came out about a year ago.
The Gimme Danger thing became something of a debacle, concerning matters that've never made their way into the public domain but which I will one day write about. I don't go so far as to say that my lips are sealed - but they're keeping shut for the moment. It was the original hardback edition that caused all the problems and which I had the most problems with. I got a chance to do a total rewrite on it before it came out in paperback, and this rewritten version is the one that's doing the rounds these days. It's a much better book than the hardback but I was so sick of the whole project by then that I didn't put my back into it as much as I would have in other calmer circumstances. It's not half the book that Moshpit Culture is - that's a piece of rock writing I am proud of. An Italian edition is about to come out with a new Milan-based imprint, Tsunami.
What are you favourite rock books?
I don’t really read rock books any more. I don’t read much nonfiction. The only rock writers I really like are ones who are not rock writers at all, like Victor Bockris, Barry Miles, and Stanley Booth. I like zines; there’s a great Irish one called The Devil On 45 which I hope to write something for. Zine writers bring a passion and genuine love of good music to the table. Most music book writers are journalists notching up career credentials as opposed to saying anything decent about music. I think my favourite rock books are The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth and Victor Bockris’ book on Blondie.
What are your five desert islands discs?
In no particular order:
Dearg Doom by Horslips
Fight For The Right To Party by the Beastie Boys
Workingman’s Blues No 2 by Bob Dylan.
Connection by the Rolling Stones
A Nation Once Again by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners.
What do you think of the state of rock journalism in the UK?
I like Big Cheese. The state of the NME is lamentable. I don’t want to read about Coldplay or the Kaiser Chiefs or to be part of any club which includes the average student of today or the average jerk who talks about Glastonbury all the time. Like I said earlier, I’m not really all that up to speed with rock journalism. Most of it everywhere, not just in England, is totally corrupt, written by hacks that’ve been bought off by the advertising departments. Don’t ever believe the hype. I grew to maturity during the epoch of punk and my mind was turned by back-in-the-day hiphop so I’m not a great one for reading the thoughts of alcoholic ex-Ents Officers from unimportant provincial universities now transposed to the outer limits of London where they’re busy massaging their egos and buying a bigger size of jeans every two months.
Who are your literary heroes?
Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, William Burroughs, Barbara Pym, Bockris, Booth. I used to love A.J.P. Taylor but I’ve been rereading him again recently and I’m not as impressed as I once was, he’s a bit of a little Englander. Norman Mailer was one of my adolescent heroes; I still have a lot of time for him. I really admire Bret Easton Ellis but he’s too young be count as a hero.
Do you write full-time? Is it hard trying to make money from writing?
I write a lot and publish a lot but I also work in music and film. It is very very hard to make money from writing. The kind of writing I do, or aspire towards doing, is not necessarily profitable anyway and I’d be lost if I wrote for money. I wrote the Iggy book for money and look where that got me….
Tell me about your novels Serious Time and Too Much Too Soon?
They’re available on Amazon. I’m proud of them. Serious Time is very much a first novel but a powerful and energetic one. Too Much Too Soon is a more intellectually mature effort and very meaty.
How do you define ‘pulp fiction?
Street writing, corner boy writing, the world of the underbelly underdog perceived by people with lowlife instincts and highbrow perceptions. Fiction which takes on board contemporary pop culture. Fiction influenced by cinema and rock music.
What are the most underrated novels you’ve read? What books have you recently read which you’d recommend to fellow readers?
I tend not to read too much obscure fiction so therefore little of what I read can be called underrated. I’m very much the regular guy in terms of what I read. I’m always reading Erle Stanley Gardner and I just finished an Eric Ambler book I’d never seen before. Neither of those writers is widely read anymore although they were phenomenal bestsellers in their day so I guess they’re underrated. Luckily for them, they made loads of money from their writing while they were alive and had huge fan bases. I read this awesome novel, I Should Have Stayed At Home by Horace McCoy, a Hollywood hardboiled novelist best known these days, if he’s known at all, for They Shoot Horses Don’t They? I’d love to make a movie out of I Should Have Stayed At Home. I even know who I’d get to play the female lead but I’m not saying who she is.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Try to live some life, to have some sexual, political, economic, social, musical adventures, experiences, disasters. Throw away your comfortable conventional life, just flush it down the toilet. Spend a lot of time alone. Learn how to listen. Learn how to write. Read some good writers. Steal other people’s stories. Study the world of publishing if you want to be a book writer because you’re wasting your time pitching the wrong publisher for your project. It’s a business (even though there’s not all that much money in it for most writers) and if one goes into a business, one needs to know one’s way around the business. Always strive to be entirely readable. I don’t have a lot of time for writing which strives, almost deliberately, to be challenging. Everything one writes should be accessible to most readers, no matter how meagre their reading skills. Don’t have a gameplan for world domination; just get on with the hard lonely slog or writing.
How easy/difficult is it to get your ideas commissioned by publishers?
I’ve never had too much bother getting commissions. For all I know that may change fundamentally tomorrow morning. I may never get a commission ever again for all I know. For instance, the Australian guy who wrote the thing about the Iggy book wrote it with the intention of sinking me. Maybe he might have succeeded if he had any clout or if he had a grouch against me which struck a chord with people.
It can be sometimes a bit of a labour of love, bringing a book to the marketplace. I had a series of mishaps with Chelsea Hotel Manhattan - most people would just have thrown their hands up in despair. It took a lot of determination but in the end it came out with Headpress who are fine small publishers and very good people to work with. That’s not to say that it’ll always be easy for everyone. I have a good friend who had a very decent biographical topic and he had fundamental problems getting a suitable publisher. He has now found a home for his book but I’m not 100% sure that it’s the right home. I think that the firm who’ve agreed to do the book are too small to be able to distribute or publicise his work in an efficient ways. Many authors don’t even have good luck and their lives pass by without ever getting into print. Life is rarely fair.
What are your future projects?
I’m working on a film treatment which a very good actor whom I admire is interested in looking at. He’s a fan of my novel and, since I’m a fan of his acting, I’m honoured. I’m doing an anthology of Fenian writings for Mercier Press in Ireland. I’m working on a third novel called The Darker Side Of Me (White Irish). I have a couple of other projects in the works for which I haven’t signed contracts yet and I don’t usually like to talk about books for which I don’t have a deal because, as I say, they may never happen. As far as writing goes, I intend concentrating on fiction for the foreseeable future as that’s the big game. I’m going to be putting some energy into musical projects under my musical alter ego, Islamic Digger. I have a few commissions on the horizon in that department. I live in Marrakesh now and the cost of living there is manageable so that allows me the luxury of concentrating on fiction for a little while.
Interview by Neil Daniels 2008
