In Other Words : Rolling Stone

These five excerpts from interviews with David Bowie, Eminem, George Harrison, Trent Reznor and Bruce Springsteen are from my new book, In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work (Hal Leonard), a collection of nearly forty interviews that span the years 1982 through 2004. Many of these interviews originally ran in Rolling Stone, where I've written since 1980. In many cases, I've gone back to the original transcripts and added material that had been edited out of the published versions for reasons of space. I've also written new introductions that tell the story behind the story from the richer perspective of the present. For those reasons, thirty to forty percent of In Other Words is entirely new.

I've always been fond of the Q&A format, which gives the reader direct access to the subject. The spoken exchanges have an inherent drama, at the same time that the conversational style is accessible, entertaining and readable. In some cases, as with the Springsteen interview, I sometimes took stories that originally ran as profiles and recast them in as Q&As. Persuading subjects to tell their stories in their own voice -- that is, "in other words," from the author's point of view -- is both the challenge and the pleasure of the interview process.

Some of the other artists who appear in In Other Words are Bono, Martin Scorsese, Keith Richards, Trey Anastasio, Pete Townshend and Johnny Cash. But the five included here are among my favorites, and they convey a sense of the intimacy, depth and candor that the book consistently strives to achieve. Enjoy!