Recently in Neil Strauss Category

Celebrated author and music journalist Neil Strauss, the force behind such tomes as Mötley Crüe bio The Dirt and The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, recently unveiled his newest book, Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, compiling 20 years' worth of his interviews with rap and rock stars for places like Rolling Stone and the New York Times. For the next several weeks, he'll be dropping by every Tuesday to tell us a little about it. Here's his first dispatch.


At some point in my late teens, I realized there were people in this country who actually made a living by hanging out with rock stars. They got to meet their heroes and ask any questions they wanted, which the musicians basically had to answer. Then they shared that experience with millions of people. And they actually got paid for that.

It sounded like the most incredible job in the world. When I told my parents I wanted to write about music, they told me to not be an idiot and to study something practical, like economics. When I insisted, they cut me off. And sure enough, they were right: I went broke, could barely afford food, and lived in a room with nothing but a turntable, a stack of books, and a sheet on the hardwood floor to sleep on. But gradually, I began writing—first for avant-garde magazines, then alternative weeklies, then glossy magazines like Rolling Stone, and eventually daily newspapers, until the New York Times actually hired me and paid me a salary to go to concerts and interview musicians.

Along the way, I got to not just meet but go on bizarre adventures with the artists I admired. When I told Rhapsody's editorial staff about my book compiling the best of two decades of these adventures, Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, they asked if I wanted to celebrate the book's release last week by sharing a few of those memorable moments on Rhapsody's blog. So here are my top five weirdest interview moments, with appropriate musical accompaniment.