Henry Yates Interview

Henry Yates with Maya Ford (left) and Allison Robertson (right) of The Donnas

A freelance rock writer based in Gloucestershire, Henry Yates has written for music magazines, including Classic Rock, Total Guitar, Guitarist, Metal Hammer and Rhythm, contributes interviews and features to various men’s magazines, writes for the Music Radar website and fills the gaps with corporate writing. He can be contacted at henryyates1@hotmail.co.uk.

 

Can you give me a brief history of your career in rock journalism?

I went round the houses a bit. In 2003, I was working as a sub-editor on a car magazine in Gloucester – I hate cars and the knuckle-dragging culture that goes with them, but took the job to escape my native London. I had posters of Jimmy Page and Morrissey on the wall around my desk, everybody else had Ford Escort Cosworths (it’s a sort of go-faster chavmobile.) The idea of becoming a music journalist never occurred to me – it seemed too fantastical to contemplate – until a job came up on Total Guitar in Bath. I applied, had two interviews and didn’t get the job, but the Editor asked if I wanted to write for them on a freelance basis. I did. I left the car magazine in May 2004 and edited three of Total Guitar’s special issues as a sort of ‘stepping stone.’ I’ve been strictly a freelance writer since the end of 2004.

 

What was your first published article?

It was a short appreciation of Noel Gallagher, published in a 2003 issue of Total Guitar (I have revised my opinion since Dig Out Your Soul.) It probably took me seven hours to write 200 words, spread over seven lunch hours in the Gloucester library, because I recognised this was My Big Chance™. My name was in a tiny typeface in the margin, almost undetectable to the naked eye, but I swelled with pride. I’d had articles published in the local press, but Total Guitar had been my bible since University and to see my own work in there was a thrill. I didn’t show many people, and I still don’t. I’m never totally satisfied with my work. It makes me squirm when friends Google me and dig up old articles that have been cack-handedly typed up onto websites with the apostrophes missing.       

 

You edited Total Guitar’s Bass Specials. Can you take me through the process of being editor of a rock magazine?

It was only three issues to ease me into freelancing, so I’m no authority on the subject. Basically, you start with a blank magazine and you have to fill it. This sounds like a piece of piss – just pick your ten favourite bands, right? – but it’s actually far tougher than you’d realise from the outside.
            It’s no problem getting small bands to fill the front end. They’re desperate for the publicity, to the point where you’ll be beating the press officers off with a stick. The trouble starts when you go after the Green Days and Velvet Revolvers. Once a band reaches a certain level of success, there’s a long queue of people who want a piece of them, so you’ll put in a request and be left hanging while the PR decides who gets the slots. I’ll never forget the gut-churning wait to hear if we’d get a slot with Robert Trujillo of Metallica, who was chalked up as the cover star. We did, and thank God, because I didn’t have a contingency plan. The magazine also ran tablature, which is a similar deal: you put in a request for a song and bite your fingernails while someone asks Jimi Hendrix’s estate if you can run it.
            There’s a million things to juggle – adverts, budgets, legal issues (I think the Editor is ultimately liable if something libellous is printed,) circulation figures. Suffice to say, I have huge respect for my own Editors for making it look so easy. I’m glad I did it, but I don’t think the job played to my strengths.        

 

What advice would you give to aspiring rock writers?

If you’re still at University, put yourself forward for the student paper; this will give you a taste of the job, albeit without pay and with generous deadlines. Once you graduate, the critical thing is to get something published by any means necessary. Take work experience wherever you can get it (not just on Kerrang! – try the local press.) Ask family and mates if they know anyone in the media (most people have at least a friend of a friend.) Take a look at courses (I went to night school at City University, although I have no formal journalism qualification.) Pitch feature ideas to the right Features Editor (sometimes they’ll ask to see your credentials, but if the idea is good enough, not always.) Offer to work for free (but be aware that doing this fuels the concept that it’s acceptable for freelancers to work for nothing.)
            Once you have experience, you could apply for the role of a Production Editor or proof reader. Both are highly skilled jobs that put you bang in the heart of a publishing house, and if you express an interest in writing, you’ll almost certainly get the chance to do some. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you join a magazine that doesn’t interest you – e.g. Teddy Bear Monthly – because most publishing houses own several titles and you’ll probably play football against the guys from the resident rock magazines.         

 

Is it a difficult occupation to get into?

People love to tell you doom-and-gloom stories about the level of competition in music journalism, and that’s probably why I never thought I could do it. The truth is, like many jobs in the media, it’s a mixture of ability and pure luck – speculatively phoning the right person at the right time. There are magazines I’ve sent my cuttings to a hundred times and had not a peep of acknowledgement. Other times, I’ve sent the right pitch and someone’s taken me up on it, even though they don’t know my track-record. Again, it comes back to getting that first article published. I will forever be grateful to Scott Rowley [then on Total Guitar, now on Classic Rock] for taking a punt on me. Once you get a chance, grab it with both hands.
            If you’re a freelancer, the next issue is writing for enough magazines to have a steady stream of work. Write to people by all means, but primarily remember to bust your balls for the magazines you already write for, and when one of the editorial team leaves for another magazine, they might just take you with them. I write for ten magazines now (not all music) and the vast majority of those contacts are people I used to know from another magazine.

 

Who were your rock writing influences when you first started writing?

I’ll be totally honest – I read the rock press voraciously at school and University, but never particularly paid attention to the by-lines (which is strange, because I admire loads of writers now and the first thing I do is check who has written the piece.) I was vaguely aware of big names like Charles Shaar Murray, Stuart Maconie, Nick Kent, Tony Parsons, etc., and subconsciously I’m sure I had my favourites, but I had no aspirations to be a rock writer at that point, so I wasn’t pushed towards the profession by anybody specific. If I liked the band, I’d read the article. For me, I never bought into that whole “the writers are as famous as the bands” thing.

 

How has rock criticism changed during the years you’ve been a writer?

I’ve been doing this six years and I haven’t noticed a huge stylistic change in that time. It’s hard to judge when you’re in the thick of it. I’m sure I’ll look back on my articles and they’ll seem very much “of their time,” like when you read those quaint NME reviews from the fifties. I hope they don’t date too badly.
            Format-wise, there’s more scope for writing on websites these days, and hundreds more bands to sort through due to MySpace, etc. Financially, it remains to be seen how badly the credit crunch will hit the industry and the profession. I hope there’s still a good UK rock media when the dust settles, a few bands left to write about and a few writers left to do it.

 

What’s your opinion on contemporary rock magazines and journalism?

I think the quality of the rock media reflects the quality of the music scene – it’s a bit like Top Of The Pops. People are sniffy about contemporary music journalists – “oh, it doesn’t compare to the NME of the seventies…” – but I think there are people writing right now who are as good as any of the sacred cows of yesteryear. You give them an interesting band and they’ll bring them to life in the pages. It’s not our fault there isn’t a Jimi Hendrix or a Led Zeppelin to write about in 2009. We do our best with the bands we have, and at the moment I actually think there are some pretty good ones.

 

Which magazines do you read? Why those particular ones?

I live in the Gloucestershire countryside and they can be a bitch to find, but I read Classic Rock, Total Guitar, Guitarist, Rhythm, Kerrang!, NME and Q on a religious basis every month, often Mojo, Uncut and Metal Hammer too. I’d probably read them anyway, but it’s essential to keep your knowledge up to speed. Between that lot, most of the bases are covered.

 

Which contemporary rock writers do you admire?

As I say, there are loads of brilliant UK rock writers around. Geoff Barton at Classic Rock continues to be a legend; he has an inimitable style which is simultaneously witty and authoritative. Ian Fortnam – also at Classic Rock – is deliciously cynical and cerebral. Nick Cracknell at Total Guitar is brilliant, as is Joel McIver. Dave Ling. Tommy Udo. Malcolm Dome. I’ve never met Mark Beaumont from NME or Michael Odell (who writes for Q, and probably lots of other magazines,) but I’ve admired them both from afar.

 

Which books on rock and metal would you recommend?

Even with access to the Internet – and I suggest you take Wikipedia with a pinch of salt – you’ll need reference books to confirm boring stuff like Eric Clapton’s birthday and the release date of Whitesnake’s Lovehunter. Then there’s extra-curricular reading. My bookshelves are groaning under the weight of autobiographies. Lemmy’s White Line Fever is as sleazy and opinionated as you’d hope. Gene Simmons’ KISS And Makeup is suitably pompous. Neil Strauss’s book on Mötley Crüe – The Dirt – is practically a set text. Don Arden’s autobiography is just plain scary. As for more general stuff, Hell Bent For Leather by Seb Hunter is a really witty overview of the metal scene that I enjoyed far more than I expected. Joel McIver is one of best rock writers out there (especially his definitive book on Metallica.) By complete coincidence, somebody bought me Stuart Maconie’s Cider With Roadies just before I took the plunge as a freelancer, and I can identify with a lot of it.

 

Who was your first interview with?

It was a fellow called Jason Truby, who was the guitarist in US Christian-metallers P.O.D (and probably still is.) I had a list of very earnest questions and I asked each one in a stiff manner until I got to the end, at which point I thanked him very much, put the phone down and started breathing again. I remember it as an unspectacular encounter in which we discussed his choice of guitar and the songwriting process (the default settings of any interview, unless you take control.)
            I keep a record of everyone I’ve interviewed for posterity. I also amuse myself by marking my interviewees out of ten for charisma. I guess the highlights – by which I mean the ones I’d tell people at parties about – would be Pete Doherty, Ronnie Wood, Slash, Jack Osbourne, Slipknot, Justin Hawkins, Moby, Queens Of The Stone Age, Sheryl Crow, Tom Morello, Carlos Santana, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Borrell, Stereophonics, er, McFly and, ahem, Eamonn Holmes.
            Atop this mountain of dropped names, I have to give special mention to Lemmy, who is my favourite interviewee of them all. A lot of people in bands these days are University-educated middle-class kids who could just as easily be working for advertising agencies or management consultancies. They’re like you or I, just with better haircuts and a little more skill on the guitar. When you sit down with Lemmy, you realise you’re in the company of a true rock star; someone who has rock ‘n’ roll coursing through his veins and would be allergic to any other kind of existence. I’ll never forget stealing Marlboros from him and chatting as we looked out from his hotel room over Hyde Park.         

 

Have you had any difficult interviews?

In my experience, it’s rare to have a disaster when you’re sat across a table from the person. There’s something about a face-to-face interview that builds rapport; they can see in your eyes that you’re not trying to stitch them up. Phoners are when the shit hits the fan. Often there’s a technical problem, like a terrible transatlantic connection that means it’s like trying to talk to someone in a nightclub. Other times, you have a strict time limit or a PR snooping to prevent you asking anything too “edgy.” If the subject is sufficiently famous, you just have to get on with it, because you probably won’t get another shot.
            Difficult interviewees fall into two categories: the boring ones and the aggressive ones. Given a choice, I’d take an aggressive one any day of the week – at least their comments look good in print – but boring ones are far more common. These are the guys who can take a juicy line of questioning and suck the life from it with a corny answer about the “organic songwriting process,” or insist on droning at length about a recording engineer you’ve never heard of. This isn’t meant to sound xenophobic – I’ve nothing against Americans as a people – but the “boring” thing seems to happen most with US bands, who often sound like they’re reading out a press release. It’s like they’ve forgotten their own days of reading music magazines, and the fact that saying dazzling, witty, daring, inspirational things is what turns a band with good tunes into a band that people fall in love with. There are many exceptions, of course.   
            Examples? I’m not the first journalist to make the observation that interviewing J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr is like pulling teeth – you come away after forty-five minutes with a tape on which he says nothing but “uh…”. Daniel Kessler took himself – and the art of his band, Interpol – absurdly seriously. You can push guys like this and sometimes it works to an extent, but you can’t turn somebody into Oscar Wilde.
            I’ve had a few confrontations. Dave Navarro sticks in my memory; he’s fine as long as you don’t deviate from the nuts-and-bolts of his guitar collection, but try anything more playful and the claws are out. He hung up on me. As did Zakk Wylde, who called me a “motherfucker” into the bargain. Zakk is actually a great guy and a brilliant talker, but he’d been up for thirty-six hours and took a question to mean that I was siding with Fred Durst in their ongoing spat. Bryan Adams was disinterested and monosyllabic. It made me question my skills as an interviewer, until I saw him doing exactly the same thing to Richard and Judy on TV the following day.
            He’s not strictly “rock”, but my biggest bust-up came at the hands of N*E*R*D frontman Pharrell Williams. It was nobody’s fault. He wanted to talk about the minutiae of the music; I was interviewing for one of the bawdier men’s magazines and had a list of prescribed questions about his trainer collection and taste in women. Having a major hip-hop star shouting down the phone at me was faintly surreal.
            To be fair, I should point out that I’m not always at the top of my game either. Sometimes, my questions are less than inspired; sometimes I’m plain knackered and can’t get the adrenalin pumping. I appreciate that doing interviews all day is quite wearing. Perhaps I should cut these guys some slack…        

Which artist(s) would you like to interview?

If they haven’t interviewed them already, most rock journalists probably have the same kind of wish-list. It’s the people you can tell your mates about, who have soundtracked your life, or who have changed history (the three often go hand-in-hand.) Keith Richards. David Bowie. John Lydon. Jimmy Page. Ozzy Osbourne. Angus Young. Liam and Noel Gallagher. Pete Townshend. Morrissey. Axl Rose. And so on. Like everybody else, I’m a shameless starfucker. It’s brilliant talking to up-and-coming bands (and you’ll do this far more often than you speak to the legends) but there is nothing like the cocktail of excitement and blind terror when someone who has decorated the walls of your bedroom walks through the door and shakes your hand. There are a few people who perhaps aren’t as “famous” to the world at large who I’d love to interview for personal reasons, and foremost amongst them is Bernard Butler, whose guitar playing on the first two Suede albums is beyond brilliant.

 

Can you name some of the best gigs you’ve been to over the years?

So many gigs… it’s hard to pick a favourite. The best ones tend to be when you see a great band at the perfect time (i.e. just before they graduate to the stadium league and release their shite third album.) On that basis, a pretty memorable one was Radiohead at the London Astoria (RIP) in 1997, when OK Computer had just come out. I wasn’t doing this job then, so I’m not sure how we got tickets, but to see a legendary band hitting the form of their lives in an intimate-ish venue was quite a spectacle. 

 

Has the job taken you abroad for interviews or gigs?

Frustratingly not, but very nearly. For whatever reason, my diary always seems to be choked up when the offers come, either with work or with the birth of my children. Sometimes, this has probably been a blessing in disguise – I was once offered an ‘on-the-road’ piece with Trivium in San Diego which might have been less than sanitary – other times, it’s made me want to bite my own hands off, like when I had to refuse an interview in Los Angeles with Ozzy Osbourne. Oh well. I’ve been to Newport.

 

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

I’d have to refer back to that Lemmy interview. It was the culmination of everything – a brilliant vibe, a great interview, a sunny day. Even the geography was perfect. It took place in a Kensington hotel near the offices of the Evening Standard, where three years earlier I’d had a work experience placement that made me think I was wasting my time considering journalism as a career. Maybe I’d absorbed some of Lemmy’s attitude by osmosis, because I remember walking out after the interview, looking up at the ES building and thinking to myself “Fuck you – I went ahead and did it anyway.” To date, I’ve never felt more like a “real” music journalist.

 

Interview by Neil Daniels 2008