Questlove Supreme: Lisa Robinson

or three CDs of every single cassette. Then I had to hire an IT guy after Richard died, and he copied it onto two different computers, three external hard drives, and three backups of the external hard drugs and secure undisclosed locations. So what's behind me? All the original interviews were some of them.

The photos I have trunks and trunks and trunks of original photos from Bob Grew and Lee Childers, Annie Liebovitz, Peter Hughes or Maplethorpe. I mean so much stuff that I never hung any of it up. It's in storage, It's in my house and boxes and closets. I actually have something, maybe you would want it. I was in Nashville and I was in a thrift store and there was one of those huge posters of a black barbershop, you know, the drawings with the fabulous kind of old like some girls kind.

eighty four CE. You're the scholar. I don't remember all the dates, okay, So oh man, I don't want to talk about the time Mick Jagger had to borrow my underpants because he lost his jockstrap. But I guess backwards, right, that's been well documented. Here's the point, I just want to say two things. You said all the people that I had interviewed, and or you started to talk about Bowie, Lou Reed, the stone Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, et cetera. You

mentioned one woman, Yoko Ono. The reason I wrote nobody ever asked me about the girls is because I had interviewed Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, Mary j Blige, Linda Ronstadt, I mean, everybody after Jennie Stoplin. Thank god it was someone before my time. And the point is I always had to answer questions like what's Eminem really like? What's cunning like? I mean, you know you probably get the same thing, or what was John Lennon really like? Or

what was David Bowie really like? And I finally got to the point after having written There Goes Gravity, which was mostly all about guys except for one chapter on Lady Garda, I thought it's about time I started dealing with the women. So that was one thing I just wanted to clarify. And the other thing is when you said that I was a pioneer at a time when no one was making a living writing about rock and roll musicians or a popular culture. We still don't make

a living and do it matter? So I just like to clarify that, for the record, we were having too much fun. Nobody was talking about money. Nobody was thinking about that. In the seventies, I would make like forty dollars a week from a syndicated column or editing Hip Parado with my husband, or going on tour with Zeppelin, and the Stones are hanging out and CBGB's every night, and I thought this was great. I mean, we were in a rent control department. I'm still in a rent

stabilized apartment, same one. We moved into a nineteen seventy six and it's like a museum. I never decorated it. It's just full of books and records and interviews and some memorabilia that I don't trust to leave in Manhattan mini storage. But it just was different time. It was like, also, Amir, you know you grew up in this business. I mean, I even think I saw as a kid Lee Andrews

and the Hearts. I don't know, maybe at the Brooklyn Fox or one of those places I snuck out of my house as a teenager to go see Thelonious Monk of the five Spot or on Coltrane or Anito O'Day and Stan Getz at the Village Vanguard, but also to go to those early rock and roll shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theater. I don't remember going to the Apollo, but I do remember going to the Apollo much later when I was teaching school in Harlem in the sixties.

But I grew up with all this music. I used to listen to it under the covers with the transistor radio, you know that old cliche, And it just made me feel like there was a great, sexy, interesting world out there, and I was a fan. And I grew up in a left wing household that played Led Belly and Woody Gothrie. And I knew about Mama Mae Thornton and sister I was Ota Thorpe, and you know a lot of stuff

that no other journalists. When I was starting out, knew about extept From my husband, who was on WAWFM when it was nineteen sixty nine free form music. And I heard his voice in the middle of the night. He was on the graveyard shift, and I thought, A he had a very sexy voice, and B he played unbelievable music. And he got fired five times. The first time was they're playing music what they called unfamiliar music, which was can Tina Turner, Tina Turner and Vanetta Field's doing a

battle on something got a hold on me. I'll never forget it. Pp Arnold doing first cut is the deepest Curtis Mayfield and the impressions because he also worked at Buddha. So so yeah. So Richard got fired for playing unfamiliar music, which was black music. Then they hired him back again because he was like the house tippy, and he got fired for playing Jimmy Hendrickson's star spangled banner because they

told him it was unpatriotic. Then they hired him again, and I think he played the stooges and the velvets, but like really, you know, some of the sicker stuff like I want to be your dog, or Heroin or white light, white heat, or just kind of noise stuff. They fired him again, and I think the last time they hired him he just went on the air, flush the toilet and walked off. And so this was my introduction to the music business. I went to work for

him doing his smiling. Five months later we got married. He turned one of his columns over to me in England. And that's kind of how it started. He opened a door and I barged through.

your brand work, how did you know that? I mean, it's somewhere between like page you know, I know that you've done in depth Q and A interviews as well, but you know, you doing quick takes like you know, Bowie hung out at Maxis Kansas City and he wore a leopard T shirt. Like people weren't describing like what people were wearing or any of those things.

and Jay went on, he has a question. He says a question, and I said, how many tracks are on WE Major? And they had no idea, They didn't know, they didn't know the answer, and so they started calling me the stumper. For a long time. Actually, Jay started calling me. He kept calling me Stumper, and I went home and called John Brian, who told me that he got it from some kidne Agar Archer made a loop of it. At any rate, what I did as a journalist from the jump was I was interested in their lives,

their music. I mean, when I met Jimmy Page, I would talk to him about Muddy Waters and Holm Wolf and Elmore James and Willie Dixon, who they ripped off allegedly, although I think they had to pay. Well. I get

very nervous about that. So you know, it's like a deesu is a maryle thing allegedly allegedly allegedly anyway, So so and I. But I'd also talked to Robert Plant about Fairport Convention and Kaleidoscope and Incredible String Band and Jenny Mitchell because I grew up the same loving the same music they did, and I I didn't love a lot of the folks stuff so much then I grew to I did like the Incredible String Band, but on Kaleidoscope. But I would talk to them about their musical taste.

I would write about their clothes. I mean, I'll never forget when I was in New Orleans with those guys the first time I ever interviewed them lengthily. Robert was wearing a red Nilon speedo bikini parading around the pool. Parading is the only word I could use for it. And Jimmy Page was wearing a maroon velvet jacket in eighty three degree weather, and I remember writing that it was sweltering at eighty three degree weather, so some of

the climate change that was nineteen seventy three. Anyway, I just started talking to them about music. I started talking about their clothes. And this was a time that people don't know they were written about as a heavy, cheesy,

heavy metal band. Every male journalist, every one of my so called colleagues who threatened to quit Cream magazine when I started to do a column called Elaganza, which was named after a black pimp catalog, and it was all about clothes, and all these guys threatened to leave the magazine because they said it was decadent. I shouldn't be writing about clothes. This was the alternative culture. This was

the revolution. I mean, this is in Detroit, by the way, where the White Panthers and John Sinclair were sitting around a table plotting revolution while the women were in the kitchen cooking. So I would just love to make that point about the MC five even though they were a great band. However, I would always talk to these guys just on a level of mutual musician fandom and asked them about their lives. I didn't review their records, I didn't review their concerts. I didn't do any boring analysis

shit about their lyrics. And I just think they were relieved. I mean again, this was at a time when John Mendelssohn wrote in Rolling Stone about the lemon song that was on a Zeppelin I think the first album, maybe the second, and he said Robert Plant sings notes only a dog come here. And if I remember that from nineteen seventy three, you can be certain that Robert Plant remembers it. And Jimmy would bitch about the reviews all the time, and I would just say, I don't give

a shit about reviews. You don't understand. Your music is majestic. You combine the hard knocking of folk music and Eastern stuff and all the scort and years from now your music will be remembered, and those magazines and newspapers will wrap fish. And sure enough, now Red Zepplin is considered one of the greatest. I means eggs All on Main Street was panned. It was my favorite Rolling Stones record

panned when it first came out. So I think part of the reason that I have the access to these bands was a I was a woman, but I was not sleeping with them, and I was not taking drugs with them. I was newly married. Richard was much cuter than any of them were anyway, and smarter. And when I first met Mick Jagger, the first thing I said to him was those of the tackiest shoes I've ever seen, because he was wearing some sort of sequin Papagallo encrusted shoes.

It was backstage at an Ever Captain concert, and you know that was refreshing to them. People would meet McJagger and they'd be like intimidated. I was from New York. I wasn't intimidated.

store and buy a gun. And this was in nineteen seventy five, and I had no idea that you could walk into a store in the South and buy a gun. I'm from New York City. I'm from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I'd never seen a gun until I saw it on that plane with Zeppelin. But it was I mean, we weren't pour underground. Atlanta had a Less Dramatics store where they sold less dramatics memorabilia. I mean,

it just was such a different time. It was like, for those who don't know, Lester Matos was the racist governor, governor or Georgia or something, or mayor of Atlanta or some political person very much like Lindsey Graham or somebody today, only worse, I mean, more, well more whatever. I'm not going to say it, that would be an allegedly defamator.

the time and it was a very checkered situation. But then Low and Richard didn't talk for years, but then Luke called him back and asked him to co produce Street Castle with him, which is a great record. And so because of our friendship with Lou, or my friendship with Patti Smith, or my going on the Stones tour, or John Lennon and Yoko letting me in their house from nineteen seventy five to eighty to do interviews, Bowie

would say to me, what's Mick Jagger doing? And Nick Jagger would say to me, don't tell that idea to Bowie because he'll steal it. Or John Lennon would say to me, I just turned stairway to Heaven. Tell Robert Plant it's great. And then I would tell that to Robert Plant and he'd say he only heard it now. I mean, it was like I was friends with Brian Ferry, when he was living with Jerry Hall and she was dating and I put quotes around that Mick Jagger, and

I never said a word about it. Because here's the other thing. I was like a fly on the wall. I would not take note in front of people. If we were doing a real interview, i'd have my tape recorders on. You've seen them, the analog tape recorders. Yes, machine, I have three of them right behind.

It was around seventy two, seventy three. Yeah, From that day on, I always took three tape recorders, and one of them I would have an external mic, two of them, not inevitably one of the three would screw up, but at least I had two, so I had a backup. Right when I first interviewed Beyonce in two thousand and four or five, when was the last Destiny show, I think it was two thousand and five, when she was

on Cover Fair. Yeah, So she looked at my setup and she just, very politely, because she's very charming, said did you ever think of moving up to digital? And I wasn't even embarrassed. I just thought, oh, digital, I don't know, probably now. And then I went home and I said, Richard, maybe I should get a digital tape recorder because people are making fun of me, and so a lot of digital tape. He got a digital tape recorder.

He made a diagram for me that was literally like in crayons, as if it were for a five year old, with like step one, step two, do this, do that, press play color coded on the god damn thing. And when I first interviewed Lady Gaga and Ten at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I very proudly brought out the digital tape recorder along with my free analog cassette and guess which one didn't work?

respectful and not invasive. To the point I may add where I was so respectful and not invasive that I toured a lot with Elton John. Of course I knew he was gay. He was showing me his handbag collection, for God's sakes, and I mean we were friends, but he wasn't out, and I was not about to out him, whereas somebody else might have done that, but then they never would have seen him again.

rock journalists. I was from New York. None of them had gone to see Pilonius Monk at the Vice, but I can assure you not at the age I anyway. And I just had a different kind of confidence and I wasn't cowed by any of this, and I just respected people's private lives. And if somebody told me something is off the record, it was off the record to this day.

all be in trouble and out of business. Now. I don't know if that's been printed anywhere, and people know who said it to your own. I don't know that I would write that, because those two guys are still alive. Prince isn't. But I did tell him that, and I told him that at his house, and I told him several times that he was an unbelievably underrated guitar player. And he said, why don't you write that? I said, why don't you let me interview you with a tape

recorder and I'll write whatever you want. You can take me taping you. I mean I did that a little bit with Kendrick. You know, sometimes in order to make somebody feel comfortable, I would say things like, listen, if you're really nervous about something and you think I'm going to misquote you, although I won't because I transcribed every single one of my interviews myself in Longhand and I never would missay. I'm the only journalist I trust. Let's

put it that way. I don't like journalists. I don't trust many of them, if any. And what I went through in the early seventies with all those guys trying to blackpool me, I mean the other women that were around. Lillian Roxon, who wrote the Rock Encyclopedia, was my best friend at the time. She was a very brilliant Bohemian Australian woman and she died in nineteen seventy three. Glorias Davers, who edited sixteen magazine. She also died in nineteen eighty three.

I think she edited sixteen magazine. But before sixteen Magazine she was a Norman Morel, very high fashion designer model. In the forties, she dated Lenny Bruce. She dated Jim Morrison. I'm not sure dated is the right word, but whatever, those were the only women who were my mentors. The rest of the women writing about music were critics. There was Ellen Willison New Yorker. There was Janet Maslim from the Boston Phoenix. There was Ellen Sander from Life magazine,

and they reviewed things. They were critics. They didn't do interviews, so I would do interviews with the tape on. Then I would also hang out with them at after hours clubs, at parties when they rehearsed in rehearsal studios in people's bedrooms, like Earl mcgrathe used to have parties in New York, and the Stones would rehearse with Thereic Claptain and Ronnie Wood. One night in that room, I remember Annie taking pictures. I would go out to the Andy Warhol's compound Inhampton's

where they were staying before the seventy five tour. I would go I took Michael Jackson to the Studio fifty four, the first time he ever went. I took the Clash to Studio fifty four. I got the Clash their record deal. I got Elvis Costello's record deal. I never made a dime from this. I was so stupid. I never thought about money. I mean, we didn't think about money. We

were having fun. We were young. It was the seventies and I was getting to see all these cons so it's for free, and prior to that I had to pay to gopha concert. We were get along the albums for free.

let's put it that way. A lot of these guys would come and sleep on our sofa. I felt like we were people said we have this salon. We did not have a salon. We had a homeless shelter. I mean, Dave marsh would come in from Detroit and sleep on our sofa. Lenny k lived there for almost a year on our Florida living room. You know. John Landa would come in from Boston when he was writing at the Phoenix before he discovered the future of rock and roll

in his name was Bruce Springsteen. Richard Meltzer and Lester Bangs were there a lot. Richard Meltzer was the real deal. He was a better writer, he was smarter, he was crazy. Lester was drunk. And Lester was also crazy and drunk and obnoxious. Quite frankly, I mean, the myth in many of these things was greater than the reality. He has been lying so much, not in a small part by

Cameron Crowe and that movie. But I only remember the drunken nights when we had to like whisper, like how we're going to get Lester out of here, you know? Or Richard Meltzer would be walking around with his shirt off in a bottle of scotch. And I don't know he's still somewhere alive writing and I haven't read him recently,

but to me, he was the real thing. And Lester got all of the credit and I don't know whether he emulated Richard, but Richard was much more interesting and insightful I felt anyway.

weren't playing instruments. You did that? Why because you wanted to hear a band that was doing hip hop play instruments or doing rap play instruments. I did what I did because nobody else was doing it, So I mean I never even thought about it. I just did it. And I really didn't read a lot of that stuff. I don't think I've ever looked at Patlarch in my life.

I didn't look complex. I didn't look at I maybe looked at the Vibe and the Source and Rolling Stone a little bit, but I never really read Rolling Stone because I didn't like the person who owned it, and I didn't like the way women were treated in that office. And it is really a badge of honor as far as I'm concerned. And I never wrote for them. And I'm being really blunt and frank with you. I'll probably get a lot of haters about a lot of this stuff, But I just I didn't really read it. I read

Cream Magazine a little bit. I mean I read my husband's column. He did a Rewire Yourself years before anybody was writing about technology. He wrote a book called The Video Primer. Richard said two things that stick out in my mind that is so brilliant. One was everybody kept saying in the seventies, who's the ex Beatles? Who's an ex Beatles? Rich band is going to be the next Beatles? And Richard said, the next Beatles is going to be a machine. This was in nineteen seventy one. Okay, so

that's who I was married to. He also said about musicians, because one minute we were managing some musicians, which really was not a smart move. But he always said managing an act is like running backwards holding up a mirror. So you know, I just didn't read this stuff. So I can't say when I think it shifted, if it did shift what I read I read. I don't know what did I read rock journalism. I'm not really because

nobody was doing what I was interested in. I was doing what I was interested in, And I'm not saying that to Sam conceited or anything, because a lot of people weren't interested in what I was running about. But I was much more interested in the human side, and I wasn't seeing that in too many places, certainly not when I started, and I'm not even sure now.

stuff with people who love it. That's why I first talked to you about the albums here, because I don't want to see these albums go to some record store in Brooklyn where somebody's going to buy one of this and three of that and two it. I just want the collection to be with someone who loves it. You know.

Q Tip actually did make his way over here one night to look at them, and he started looking up every album and appraising it and figuring out the prices, and then he said, I'm sending my assistant back to see you next week and we're going to do this. And that was no, that was one, two, three, three and a half years ago.

every day. And now starting this serious radio show, which is just once a week, I'll be able to talk, which I love in writing. I don't know if I want to write another book. I don't know. I don't know who else I want to interview. I mean, you talk about how did I know the future of rock and roll with CBGB's I didn't. I just was there when it happened and it just seemed right. It was fun. If I had been able to predict the future, first of all, as Friendly for It says, I would pick

better a lot of tickets. But also I would have known about hip hop before I did, because that's inexcusable that I was living in New York City and I didn't even know that this was going on for quite a while. Because as I said, it's still the music that it's on my iPod, that in Frank Sinatra and some Florio's Mark Andero corner.