#michaelazerrad

Legendary author of two of the most critically acclaimed and widely read music books of a generation – 1993’s Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana and his definitive account of late-Eighties/early-Nineties U.S. underground rock in 2001’s Our Band Could Be Your Life – it’s safe to say that Michael Azerrad knows a thing or two about rock music, past and present. Taking time out of writing for the likes of New York Times, MTV, Spin and being a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, Azerrad speaks to AU about commercialism, Kurt Cobain and the true meaning of indie rock.

Could you pinpoint a few significant moments or transitions in rock music in the last 15 years?

One of the most significant moments was the beginning of the music community in Williamsburg in the late Nineties and early 2000s. There had always been a few musicians there — They Might Be Giants had been longtime Williamsburgers — but when bands like Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Oneida (I’m sure I’m leaving out crucial others) began playing loft parties, they were the spark of an important cultural explosion that’s still being felt today.

The rise of Pitchfork, however one feels about it, is undoubtedly significant. Same with YouTube, MySpace, Soundcloud, etc. I actually think 9/11 was significant to rock music.  Afterwards, a lot of bands became very derivative of music from their childhood, i.e., the Eighties. That was no coincidence; there’s safety in that. But then a new crop of bands reacted by making blazingly original music. We’re still in that period now.

And of course the advent of the mp3 is probably the biggest transition of that period. Reams and reams are written about this every day; no need to add to that.

Do you observe parallels between the perceived indie underground of today and that of the late Eighties? A lot has changed and, evidently, much has stayed the same.

The first thing that springs to mind is something that former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt said in Our Band Could Be Your Life: that their records were merely “a flyer for the show”. In other words, the Minutemen didn’t depend on record sales for their livelihood, or maybe even their artistic satisfaction. Record sales were negligible, and they made their money and got the biggest kick out of playing live shows. And for many bands, that’s true again today.

And, as it was in the Eighties, the indie underground is enabled by seizing the means of production. Except now, with digital technology and the Internet, the reach of the means of production is exponentially greater. Instead of photocopied fanzines, we have blogs that can be read all over the planet; instead of college radio, we have internet radio; instead of cassette trading, we have Spotify playlists and various other digital analogues of the cassette mixtape; instead of inexpensive recording studios, we have Protools, etc. It’s all the same, but magnified a hundredfold.

Are there scenes that you feel are currently being neglected, in the same way which ultimately impelled you to write Our Band Could Be Your Life?

One of the best, and worst, things about the internet age is that virtually no scenes, or indeed anything that happens anywhere, are neglected anymore.

When was the last time you got a feeling of “something’s happening here” in regards to either a collective or scene?

I should state straight away that in no way do I believe that the era depicted in Our Band Could Be Your Life was the greatest that music has ever produced.  It was one of them, but there have been plenty more golden ages, both before and after that one. In fact, the musical era we’re in right now is one of the best of my lifetime. I can say this with utter certainty because I’ve seen many musical eras come and go, and I’ve learned to spot a good one. So go out and see as many of the leading bands of the day as you can; you will have bragging rights for the rest of your life.

One US community that is really vibrant is the one in Baltimore. There are many outstanding bands there: Beach House is the most well known example, but there’s also Wye Oak, Future Islands, Dan Deacon, Lower Dens, and tons more. And they all know each other and support each other’s music. For all the massive power of social media, there remains no substitute for real-time, real-space, physical community. When great people are in the same room together, things inevitably happen.

How do you perceive the usage of Spotify (and the idea of non-physical music ownership in general) impacts upon the value placed on experiencing new music? A lot of people overstate it as a negative but surely it’s an almost necessary transition?

I think it’s a positive, actually. Music is immaterial; when people get fetishistic about the format in which it appears, that’s completely missing the point. My older friends often complain that they need “the physical object” — i.e., an LP or even a CD — in order to have a meaningful relationship to the music it contains. That’s ridiculous. It’s just a consumeristic approach to art.

And streaming services only encourage people to explore music they might not otherwise have found. That can only be a good thing. Granted, some streaming sites only reinforce one’s current listening habits, but there’s still plenty of opportunity for discovery.

There is a tendency for people to utilise the supposed “obscurity” of indie rock bands to caress their ego, so to speak. Surely that wasn’t the case when the likes of Butthole Surfers, Hüsker Dü and Minutemen were on the road?

I’d only direct your attention to the passage in Our Band Could Be Your Life in which Butthole Surfers singer Gibby Haynes, who left a lucrative career as a corporate accountant so he could be in a band, is scrounging the streets of New York for bottles and cans to return for a five-cent deposit. At one point, his bag of bottles and cans breaks, scattering them all over the sidewalk. He breaks down in tears.

The idea of music is communication. Musicians want to communicate to more people, not less. Prizing obscurity is entirely the province of zealous, possessive fans, not musicians, or at least any musician I’ve ever met.

Your book Come As Your Are: The Story of Nirvana is perhaps the most conclusive work on the subject. Do you envisage another rock band breaking through and capturing the imagination of a whole generation?

I think that’s pretty unlikely. That paradigm is over. The most recent stadium-filling band is U2, and their first album came out in 1980. (OK, maybe Foo Fighters could give them a run for their money.) The music audience is profoundly balkanised by this point; it’s hundreds of tribes, rather than maybe half a dozen. It’s unlikely that significant amounts of people will rally around one band again.

Are you aware of Kurt having read Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana?

Yes, I’m very aware of Kurt having read Come As You Are — because I watched him read it. The publisher felt it was important that he get a look at it before it went out to the public — there was a lot of sensitive stuff in the book and they didn’t want him to be blindsided by press inquiries about it. But they didn’t want the manuscript to be seen by anyone but him, so I flew out to Seattle and he read it in my hotel room over the course of three evenings. He’d come over around midnight and read into the wee hours. We’d already agreed that I could write whatever I wanted, and I’d been meticulous about fact-checking, so he only had a few, relatively minor corrections, like the spelling of his aunt’s last name, or what year he left high school.

Several times Kurt mentioned how enlightening it was to read about his life in chronological order. He chuckled a lot throughout the book. He read the last page shortly before dawn one night, got up, hugged me and said, “That’s the best rock book I’ve ever read,” and headed back home. After Dave Grohl read it, he called me up and left a message: “I read your book.  It’s great!” Then he added, with a mixture of relief and wonderment, “and it’s all true!”

How differently do you think music, in general, would be if Kurt were alive today?

I wish I had some big answer for you, but it’s fundamentally unknowable. About the only thing I could say is that we would have more music by Kurt.

For those who haven’t read it, what is the underlying philosophy/ethos that you attempted to capture in Our Band Could Be Your Life?

The ethos was captured by the epigraph of the book, which was from William Blake: “I must create my own system, lest I be enslaved by another man’s.” That takes initiative and imagination, and those things are what impelled everyone in that book.

And it’s called Our Band Could Be Your Life because that sensibility that can be applied to anything, not just making and distributing music. That’s what I hope people get out of it — that you can take the ideas in the book and use them for anything. And sure enough, people have — I’ve met folks who are punk rock pastry chefs, architects, doctors, etc. ”Think for yourself” is a completely portable idea.

Which personalities featured in OBCBYL do you feel embodied the essence of the flourishing underground of the time?

Each in their own way, they all did — that’s why they’re in the book.

Do you adhere to the idea of focusing on creating a small scene first and foremost (i.e. The DC scene of Teenbeat/Dischord) before “conquering” elsewhere?

I’m not sure that I’ve ever outspokenly advocated that approach, but it does seem like a sound one. Bands need to refine their work in a supportive environment, and local communities are the ideal place to do that.

The once held definition of the word indie has broke off into several, often unusual strands. What does it mean to you, in its purest form?

In its purest sense, “indie” means music that bears no financial relationship to any of the major labels. Major label distribution doesn’t mean quite as much as it used to, but it still confers significant advantages, so the distinction between major and indie remains a valid one, even if few people recognise it anymore.

Indie, like every other underground cultural movement, has been absorbed, co-opted, by the mainstream. So it now refers to a marketing demographic rather than a fiscal designation or even a style of music. But it’s pointless to wring one’s hands about the co-optation of a word or even a cultural movement. A new one will spring up in its place.

Outside of music journalism, are you currently writing/preparing any music books at the minute?

No, I’m not working on a book. I haven’t found another topic worth devoting several years of my life to. If you have any suggestions, by all means let me know. I’d definitely like to write more books, but the stars have to align for that to happen. Writing a book is a brutal thing to do to oneself, on many levels, so it’s got to be an exceptional project. I edited Bob Mould’s recent critically acclaimed autobiography See A Little Light, and that was an amazing, very satisfying experience. It was a great honour to go on that very intense journey with Bob. I’d like to do something like that again very soon.

Lastly, do you envisage much tangible revolution in music in next five to 10 years?