Hopper is a predictably cool customer coming down the line, answering ‘That is correct’ with seasoned professionalism after the similarities are pointed out between her author photo (above) and photos of writer Joan Didion in front of her Corvette Stingray.
Tales of the new journalists hanging out with musicians in the 70s weren’t really her writing inspiration though. “I’ve worked more as a critic than a reporter or journalist, per se, and I’ve tended to write more about what I thought or I saw more than what other people are doing” she explains, “Often I’ve found that though artists are being very open with you, and letting you into their world , whether it’s a recording studio or candid conversation, they’re still very protective of themselves because they’re in the public eye. It doesn’t mean you’re any closer to them or ‘the truth’ about them”.
It’s a harsh moment for a writer to realise, when those they idolise aren’t what they thought, and Hopper is no stranger to bad experiences with heroes and heroines. “Some people give very very grumpy interviews. I interviewed [singer] David Thomas, who is famous for being a total grump, but I was all of 19 and I was mortified!” she says with audible embarrassment.
Nearly two decades away from her early music writing years, she has had the opportunity to interview Kendrick Lamar for SPIN, and though Hopper admits to relishing such opportunities, they carry with them their own pressure. “I got an hour in the back of a tour bus. Before any of the Kendrick mania had happened. I basically had to get as deep as I could get in that hour. At that time there was maybe four stories about him. There was no mythology like there is now. So I had to pick out what is compelling from the story as he’s telling it to me.” Pre-empting a follow up question, she continues, “I think sometimes when you do know too much about someone you tend to ask maybe leading questions. You project all the minutiae collected from what you know about them.”
[include_post id=”199712″] The struggle is real. With the move of music writing from print to online, there is an anxiety that writers suffer, not unlike anyone working in customer service, of being aware of the abyss you are sending what you say into, and of wanting such interactions to be as meaningful as they can be. Hopper is sympathetic, “For a couple of years I did the local music column for a paper here in Chicago. Often I would just pick a local band that sounded interesting, maybe they had a song I liked or something, but it was always a random reason and the bands would always say ‘How do you even know about us?’ Sometimes when someone’s never been interviewed before they tell you what they think you want to hear, sometimes they’re teenagers and haven’t spoken to anyone outside of their band about music before even.”
“Social media often gives us TMI [too much information] about artists”Although a lot of writing tips are well known, Hopper’s experience italicises their importance, “Doing so many fairly routine interviews I realised the best follow up question is usually ‘why?’ That’s how you get someone to open up, instead of allowing them to give you the answers that make them look cool because they’re self protective, which we all are” she explains, “Having that column really helped me to understand it wasn’t my job to help someone look a certain way. It can be a fun challenge, to ask yourself ‘how do I explain this to someone who has no idea what I’m talking about?’”
The matriarchal intelligence is hard to ignore. Hopper listens to bemoaning of music streaming sites interrupting first listens of Pimp a Butterfly with ads as the discussion moves towards the large and hungry beast that is online music media.
“Sometimes, with the kind of things that get reported on now, like the twitter feuds and things like that, it’s all part of the same news cycle as how people learn about and consume music. It’s wrapped up in social media. And social media often gives us TMI [too much information] about artists, and some artists retweet just the compliments, and some say sexist or homophobic things on their twitter. All this knowledge can really ruin your admiration for that artists craft. I think that is the real hazard of being a fan in 2015” she offers, before adding “For me, it’s too hard to separate my morals and politics from it all.”
[PHOTO: Jessica hanging out with Sleater Kinney]
It’s an increasing hazard, as ‘TMI’ turns into ‘career-over’ for artists, who are from then on engaged with apprehensively with old and new audiences. A fine example of deserved artistic scrutiny can be found in Hopper’s book, which features her 2013 interview for The Village Voice with Jim DeRogatis, a fellow music journalist best known for doggedly discussing and reporting on news of R Kelly’s sexual acts with underage girls. An interview which reveals the more disturbing aspects of what reporting on artists can involve.
The book also offers her 2005 EMP Conference Paper about ‘Grunge Poserdom’, which Hopper discusses in the same meditative way she seems to consume music in general. “Around the age of fourteen or fifteen I was quite interested in classic rock because it was older, and I was really interested in music that was ‘saying something’ you know?” she recounts, “Being the mid eighties I was very much being sold the American boomer generation ‘True music of the 60s’ and Woodstock stuff. Your classic rock canon – Eagles and things like that, you know your ‘real’ bands – of course some of that resonated with me. It wasn’t until a friend, whose older brother got him into punk rock, made me a tape and I listened and had that moment of ‘Oh! This is what’s really speaking to me” she recalls fondly, “I knew a few songs in that these bands were what I was going to care about. All of a sudden I had an identity.”
The elusive identity. One can only hope current teenagers at least make digital playlists for each other. Hopper’s book will be a reminder that Van Morrison once awoke the power of the gospels within you, and that you don’t need to provoke those times you felt music loving you back.
[include_post id=”189694″] Somewhere between the lines, the collection even suggests itself as the cultural critique that perhaps many were wanting articulated leaving a gig late at night or listening to music at the back of a bus. There’s no denying the books importance. “One thing I do like doing is watching the audience and how they’re reacting” Hopper muses, discussing the disappointing lack of dancing at some gigs. “Sometimes I go to shows and wonder ‘What is everyone so freaked out about?’ And I wonder, what is it that the band is doing that is causing this reaction in the audience? I am an observer of crowds and audiences as much as I am of the people who brought them there.”
In celebration of Hopper’s newly published anthology, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (buy here), she will be ion Australia in September as part of BIGSOUND 2015 info here.
