The 'Days Between Stations' columns, Interview magazine 1992-2008

Over the last few years both publishers and readers have asked me about a collection, a so-called Reader, something covering the whole wobbly arc since my first published piece in Rolling Stone in 1968 to whenever now might have turned out to be. I spent too much time going over everything I had, but even restricting myself to pieces that hadn't already been collected or cannibalized in my own books there was just too much. I needed an editor—not just someone with good what-to-leave-in-what-to-leave-out judgement, but someone to come to my basement office and go through everything, just as the late Ed Ward did when crates of Lester Bangs's writing collected by his friends and colleagues from all over arrived and I knew I could never make even a stab at the millions of words alone. Finally, what I found myself thinking about was some sort of omnibus combined with books comprising the entire runs of certain columns, as I've done with the migrating “Real Life Rock Top 10” columns—the “Undercover” book column I wrote for Rolling Stone 1975-80, the Interview columns from 1992-2008.

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And that was the one I truly wanted to do.  It began when the late Ingrid Sischy, who I'd worked with so happily at Artforum for years—she was a great editor, an inspiring person, someone who'd schedule an open-ended edit at the office at night and go for as long as it took for some ridiculously complicated project that paid off—asked me about a music column for Interview, where she’d taken over. I was writing “Real Life Rock” every month, as later I’d be writing columns for the New York Times, Esquire, and other places, but I could never say no to Ingrid and never wanted to. We called it “Days Between Stations,” after Steve Erickson's first novel. The idea of drifting between radio stations or getting caught in some nowhere on the dial—the way Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller described the soul vocal and the harsh and pounding strings on the Drifters' "There Goes My Baby" as sounding like something that was stuck between Top 40 and classical stations—seemed so evocative. And for at least the first ten years, when it ran almost continually—later it was broken up when I took leaves to finish books, when the magazine didn’t have room in a given month, for reasons I don’t remember—it had a theme, not pursued but imposed, governed by history as it was being made. The column was about music and elections, and if felt to me that the columns were letters to each other. That’s why I wanted them together as a book, even if, reasonably, no one would want to publish it and no one other than a hundred people here and there would want to buy it. 

The column was edited for the better part of its life by the Interview film critic Graham Fuller—who had a keen eye for clichés and easy outs, and who often came up with ideas when I had none. After one long break, when I came back Ingrid wanted a new name for the column: sitting in her office on Broadway, my mind emptying at the question, “Elephant Dancing” popped out of my evil second mind. “Great,” she said.  “No, I was only kidding,” I said.  “No, it’s perfect”—perfect for what, I wondered, but for the last installments that was it. 

I didn’t write the last column as a last column. A call came: Ingrid had disappeared into the night. Just like that, a new editor was on the line, saying they were killing “all the columns,” which meant Graham’s and mine, because the magazine was “going more visual.” The last column just turned out to be about an ending.

“Days Between Stations” was by far the longest run I've ever had for any column in a single publication. With that title only, I’ll be posting them in the order they ran, once a week, starting tomorrow, for as long as it goes. To me, the history they recount, musical and political, is still with us. We’ll see if you agree.

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