Adam Sobsey - The Interview

This week, I sit down with writer Adam Sobsey, author of Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography and A Jewish Appendix, for a conversation about music, writing, creativity, and the ways songs connect us to memory, identity, and each other.

Adam shares how music first entered his life, before leading him into bands, playwriting, criticism, and eventually a full-length biography of Chrissie Hynde. We talk about what makes Hynde and The Pretenders so compelling and why her later career deserves a closer listen.

We also discuss Adam’s book A Jewish Appendix, his current fiction project inspired by Scott Miller of Game Theory and The Loud Family, the role of outsiders in art, and some unforgettable concert memories, from The B-52s and Fishbone to The Pretenders, and Swervedriver.

The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production.

Podcast Playlist can be found at:
Apple Music

Spotify

Adams books can be found at Amazon:
Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography

A Jewish Appendix

and his essays can be found at his website, https://sobsey.com/

===========================

Connect with us on social media!
YouTube
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook

Transcript

Alex Gadd 0:02

Welcome to the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gadd. On this show, I like to talk with people who love music enough to build at least part of their lives around it. Whether they're musicians, songwriters, journalists, music historians, or just music fans, I'm looking to bring you, the audience, conversations with interesting people who have great stories to tell about music, and rock and roll music in particular. Because music is never just about the sound coming out of the speakers, it's also about memory, identity, influence, connection, sometimes just a great excuse to sit down with someone and swap stories. And that's why I do this show. I love talking about music with people, where it came from, what it means to them, and why it still matters. My guest this week is writer Adam Sobsey, the author of two books, including a biography of Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, which was published in 2017, and his most recent work, A Jewish Appendix, which was released last year. He also writes for The Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Pop Matters, and other internet outlets. And he's a playwright, so there's a lot to cover, let's get into it. Adam, welcome to the show

Soba411 1:31

Thanks, Alex. I really am happy to be here

ALEX 1:33

And I'm glad to have you. So first, I, I'd like to just point out that I met you through mutual friends. Eric Blakeslee, a good friend of mine, was the first guest ever on this podcast. And he and his girlfriend Quincy know you, fellow North Carolinians. And, that's how we connected. We started off talking... What was the first conversation that we were trading? Oh, good cover songs, was it?

Soba411 1:58

That's right. Mm-hmm

ALEX 1:59

Yeah. So here we are today, and I find out through interacting with you that you're an author of two books and you're a prolific writer and a playwright, I just found out recently, but I love to start out with just how music came into your life at the beginning. Like, when were you first aware of it? When did you first find yourself drawn to it?

Soba411 2:21

My grandmother was a classically trained pianist And when I was little, when we would go visit them, there was a Steinway baby grand piano in their house, which was not really big enough to accommodate such a piece of furniture. But, I remember being quite impressed as a tyke that there was this enormous piano in there. She had, uh, quite a story that I won't go too deep into, but she went to Julliard and, had what I think would've been characterized at the time as an episode of stage fright that resulted in something like a nervous breakdown, and she never really played much after that except recreationally in the house. Having said that, I didn't really get interested in classical music at all until I went to college to study music theory. By the time I was, nine or 10 years old, I was teaching myself how to play the piano, which I think I could only do because I had some sort of genetic inheritance from my grandmother. Uh, later studied some jazz piano and then, like I said, music theory. But mostly what I wanted to play and listen to was pop music and rock 'n' roll music, and that's actually how got into all of this in the first place. I think I can, go ahead and accept any stones that are gonna get thrown at me by saying that I actually learned how to play piano and how, um, songs are built at the level of craft by able to play by the age of 13 pretty much every song Billy Joel ever wrote and recorded. And I would, I would die on the hill of saying that Billy Joel was, in fact, a, a pretty great composer. If you just hate him because he was, once described as a force of nature and bad taste, which I think is probably true. but, uh, es- at the level of compositional craft, I, I, I think of his time, he's just about as good as anybody was, and if you just wanted to learn how to play the keyboard, he was a great model for that. I think I finally got cool enough to stop playing Billy Joel songs, but I still can get me drunk enough. So that's how I, that's how I got to learn how music worked, really, and then later, like most other people, got interested in, in a much wider spectrum of pop music. I think by the time I was 17, I was probably mostly listening to Elvis Costello, who for all his justifiably lauded lyrics, is actually quite a composer. I don't think he gets enough credit for that. A great melodist and a great composer of, of chord structures and, and all of that. That's how I got into it. Then I played music for a bunch of years. I actually wrote a couple of musicals in, in school I was also studying playwriting, and that's what broadened my thinking about the whole business. And then at some point, I just started writing about music, and that eventually took hold, I guess mostly in my 30s and into my 40s. I still play recreationally at home, but, my engagement with music is mostly as a writer now

ALEX 5:43

Okay. A lot, a lot to take in there, but thank you for that. Did you ever play in a band?

Soba411 5:50

In high school, yes, and briefly in college

ALEX 5:52

And you played keys only?

Soba411 5:55

And I sang.

ALEX 5:56

And sang, okay. And what kind of music were you playing then when you were in that band? Was it original? Was it cover band stuff?

Soba411 6:03

Yeah, both. I wrote some songs and, one of the other guys in the band wrote some songs, but we mostly just played covers. We didn't play out very much. We just did it for fun. Uh, and I, I liked playing in a band

ALEX 6:19

Yeah, I loved it too. Gotta ask what the name of the band was

Soba411 6:25

Oh, did we ever wind up having a name? Oh, yes, we did. Uh, don't repeat this except that it's gonna be on a podcast. Five O'Clock Shadow.

ALEX 6:34

Oh, I like it. That's good, especially for young teenagers

Soba411 6:37

Yes, Yes, aspirational.

ALEX 6:39

Yes, I love it. All right, so you taught yourself how to play music by playing Billy Joel songs. Did you get... And Beatles, yeah. I think The Beatles is pretty, for, for people of our age, pretty foundational to any musician, is at some point you dabble in The Beatles as an entry point to, uh, learning how to play. But you're s- totally self-taught. You never took a lesson, is that correct?

Soba411 7:03

Uh, in, in high school I took some jazz piano

ALEX 7:05

jazz piano lessons,

Soba411 7:06

for about a year or two

ALEX 7:08

but you already knew how to play by that point.

Soba411 7:11

I did.

ALEX 7:11

Yeah. Did you get encouragement from your parents, your grandparents especially, um, to keep going or to, to do it, or were they indifferent to it?

Soba411 7:22

No, I got a lot of encouragement

ALEX 7:24

Yeah.

Soba411 7:25

actually.

ALEX 7:26

That's great

Soba411 7:26

They were, they were all, they were all behind it. I, I come from a, in, in addition to my grandmother, I come from a family of artists, so

ALEX 7:32

Th-that's great

Soba411 7:34

it was a clear path

ALEX 7:36

That's good. You say that you wrote musicals in college. You went to school, I believe, for theater arts. Is that correct? Was that your undergraduate degree?

Soba411 7:44

that's what my undergraduate degree is in, and then later I got an MFA in playwriting

ALEX 7:48

Yeah. So how many shows have you had produced, even, amateurly during school?

Soba411 7:59

I don't think my musicals were ever produced. I- well, that's not entirely true. I collaborated with another playwright on a play with songs, not quite a musical, was produced. We talked about remounting it at some point, but she wanted to revise the script and then never did.

ALEX 8:15

Hmm.

Soba411 8:16

And then I've written any number of other, straight plays for, for the theater that have been produced. Five or six, I think.

ALEX 8:23

Wow

Soba411 8:23

couple more in the can, but I haven't had a chance to actually stage them, which is this whole undertaking. I, I tell people a lot... I actually learned this from a, a great playwriting professor that I had in graduate school. The way you discover when you write a play is that a- because a play is just a, an, an inducement to continue a process, your play is actually calling into being a corporation that has to exist to produce the play. And every, every play has its own unique corporation, and they can get quite complicated and expensive to run, so you have to do a lot of fundraising and, and mounting of an entire structure. So at some point, I wanna, I wanna put these two up, but I have to figure out how to, how to start the corporation. Producing a record is not that different really

ALEX 9:12

I wonder now, like you can do a lot more of producing a record at home by yourself these days.

Soba411 9:17

Yes

ALEX 9:18

but I don't think you can really mount a production unless you wanna do a one-person play. Uh, you need other people. Yeah

Soba411 9:25

That's right. It's a, it's a group Even if it is a one-person play, you need,

ALEX 9:31

Yeah, for sure.

Soba411 9:32

beings around you

ALEX 9:33

Right, and you need an audience. I mean, you can produce a play at home for nobody, but is that really a play or is that just you talking to the wall?

Soba411 9:41

No, you, you, you have to do the actual play.

ALEX 9:43

Right.

Soba411 9:44

in the room.

ALEX 9:45

Right

Soba411 9:46

the, the other, the other thing that same playwriting professor told me once was that the, the play doesn't take place on the stage, the play takes place in the audience

ALEX 9:55

I like that idea. I've heard, you know, anytime you play out live, it's the same thing. Like, you can play music by yourself and it sounds however it sounds, but it's how it moves someone, how they're receiving it that makes, that, that completes that circuit, and I feel like

Soba411 10:10

right.

ALEX 10:10

what you're talking about with playwriting

Soba411 10:12

right

ALEX 10:12

as well. Yep. Um, so you've written musicals, you've written plays, but you then said you transitioned into kind of writing as your primary form of interaction with music. What was the first assignment you ever got, and what was it about?

Soba411 10:32

To write about music?

ALEX 10:33

Yeah

Soba411 10:35

It was in college. The, campus newspaper had a, a what to do this weekend or something like that section, and, you know, I... This was before I really knew how any of this worked, and I'm sure the landscape has changed, but the, the editor of the arts section or whatever it was would just get CDs and records sent to her in the mail and just ask people, "Do you wanna review

ALEX 11:01

Mm-hmm

Soba411 11:01

I didn't entirely know what I was doing, but I would just listen to these records and write about them. I remember reviewing a record by Paul Weller

ALEX 11:13

Mm-hmm. Of The Jam? Yeah

Soba411 11:16

and I remember reviewing One of the Prince records that came out after he changed his name to a logo.

ALEX 11:29

Mm-hmm

Soba411 11:29

The first one probably,

ALEX 11:31

Mm-hmm

Soba411 11:31

I was totally flummoxed by, but I remember reviewing both of those

ALEX 11:34

did that propel you to say, "I would like to do this as a career," or did you not yet know that that was where your life was taking you?

Soba411 11:43

I knew I wanted to write. I knew I wanted to do music too.

ALEX 11:48

Mm-hmm

Soba411 11:48

What I didn't realize at the time was that I was probably mostly gonna be doing music as a writer.

ALEX 11:53

Mm-hmm

Soba411 11:54

Um, I figured that out somewhat later. I, I liked writing songs. I didn't really like playing them all that much, like live or I mean, I liked playing with these guys in this little band that I had,

ALEX 12:09

Mm-hmm

Soba411 12:10

um, I, I liked, I liked writing them more than I liked anything else, and I, I think that at some point I kind of realized that I was also just writing prose for the stage and that, and that I had some sort of a critical faculty, and one thing led to another. I wasn't really trying to do it, after a while I just realized that that was what I was doing,

ALEX 12:38

Right

Soba411 12:39

sometimes that becomes what you're meant to do without realizing you're meant to do it. Some, reptilian core of y- of your brain is saying, "You, you wanna do this," so then I was just doing it

ALEX 12:50

Got it. Have you performed music live ever again?

Soba411 12:57

Uh, does it count that I played a Billy Joel song at my wedding?

ALEX 13:01

Sure.

Soba411 13:02

Then

ALEX 13:03

W- was that the last time?

Soba411 13:07

For people in a room,

ALEX 13:08

Yes

Soba411 13:09

yeah, it wa- I- it was the last time

ALEX 13:12

What Billy Joel song was that?

Soba411 13:14

Just the Way You Are

ALEX 13:15

Perfect. Perfect. I think that's the song that actually kind of ruined his reputation and, and made him look too soft to be a rock and roller, and made him more of like a, an adult contemporary artist very early in his career

Soba411 13:29

There's a very funny little anecdote about that song. He brought it to his band, um, to learn, and his drummer, Liberty DeVitto, with whom he later had an, a, a falling out that was, that lasted forever and resulted in lawsuits and all that sort of thing. Liberty DeVitto heard, heard the song and said, "I'm not playing that song. That's a cha-cha. I don't play cha-cha. We're not, I'm not doing it. Forget it."

ALEX 13:51

Yeah

Soba411 13:52

Um, and, and so th- this is part of the reason I think why Liberty DeVitto wound up suing him. He, he made up, his own, drum track for it, his own drum part for it, that took the cha-cha apart and remade the entire song. he did this with any number of Billy Joel songs where he would come in with these, these drum parts that were probably not what Billy Joel heard in his head when he wrote them,

ALEX 14:15

Right

Soba411 14:15

those became part of the signature of the song. I think that's definitely true in Just The Way You Are, which actually has kind of a backwards beat.

ALEX 14:23

You know, it's funny you say that. There's a YouTube channel called Drumeo where this guy Brandon, up in Canada has drummers come through and they all, they do all kinds of things. They do lessons, they break down their most famous songs. They even, there's a great series where he has them listen to a drumless track of a song they don't know but is known to other people, and then they make up their own drum track. And he had Liberty DeVitto on, and he did all kinds of things, including breaking down that, beat for "Just the Way You Are."

14:53

So one of the tracks off this record, Just The Way You Are, um, this is like another one of your signature drum parts. I guess let's, let's play the song and then we'll come back and chat about it. It's another one of those songs where I could, I can nap before I start playing, you know? You gotta get mad at Billy for that, though. Well, he is Billy Joel. You know, he, uh- Let him take his time. Yeah, yeah. He, he wants to start every song, let him do it. Love it. All right, this is, uh, Just The Way You Are from The Stranger. I took a good time

ALEX 15:58

So writing about music, the Chrissie Hynde biography called Chrissie Hynde: A Musical Biography, which I read over the weekend, is really good. and I believe you said in the acknowledgments that a compatriot or a friend of yours or someone you knew asked you to write it. You hadn't intended to write that and set out to write it. You were asked to write it. Um, but then you seemed to undertake it with a good deal of, verve and really dug in. It was quite thorough. How... Was that the first music writing you did or had you already been writing about music for years before that?

Soba411 16:36

I had been doing it and off, but never consistently. That book came about in a funny way, and thank you for your kind words about it. I had w- I had actually spent several years as a baseball writer, covering our local minor league team here, but also writing for Baseball Prospectus, which is,

ALEX 16:55

Oh, I know it well. I'm a fantasy baseball nerd, so

Soba411 16:58

yeah. and, that time in my life culminated in a project, called Bull City Summer, a book that I co-authored, which was about, the Durham Bulls and Minor League Baseball, and a lot of things clustered around that. And there was a profile of the project done by David Menconi, who, um, was the longtime music critic for the Raleigh News Observer. He's an outstanding music writer. And he did a feature about it and, and I don't know why he did this or why he thought I should write a music book, but he contacted me and said, "I'm editing a series of music books for the University of Texas Press. Do you wanna write one?" And before he came to his senses and realized he had asked a baseball writer to write about music, because he did not know that I had a music background, I said, "Yes. answer is yes. What do you, who do you want me to write about?" And he said, "Oh, well, these are writer-driven projects. Who do you wanna write about?" So I pitched him a list of names, one of which was Billy Joel probably. He came back to me and said, a lot of these sound very cool, but the publishers want more books about, women and, musicians of color. Come back with another list." My wife and I just sat up in bed one night and spitballed a bunch of names back and forth, and I found myself telling her among, among other things, that w- that band that I was in in high school had covered My City Was Gone by The Pretenders. It's a wonderful song. That song was actually r- derived from the bass part,

ALEX 18:40

Mm-hmm

Soba411 18:40

which the guy from Big Country made up, I

ALEX 18:42

Oh, I didn't know that

Soba411 18:44

Yeah. he played, he played with her for a little while. there's no keyboard on that song, or if it's, part of the, yeah, the layering. So I just sang it. and My voice was in that awkward zone between and not breaking. And in addition to having that trouble, the song sounded very simple to me, but... And I was a big fan of Learning to Crawl. I brought that song to the band. I thought Learning to Crawl was an amazing album. I still think it's an amazing album. And when we decided to do that one, I thought, "No problem, I can sing this." And as I was listening to that and listening to the rest of the album and trying to sing along with it, I realized Chrissie Hynde has a very, very difficult voice to mimic, harder you try, the worse it gets. Because she has a melismatic affectation that is, that sounds simple and isn't, and is really part of her unique signature as a vocalist. And it's almost impossible to do it in an analogous way. I c- really just couldn't do it, and I don't really remember how I wound up singing the song, but I realized this is a, this is a much more extraordinary singer than I realized. uh, at some point, maybe breaking down one of the other songs on that record, I realized these are much more deceptively complicated songs than I thought. So I threw her name on the list, really having lost total track of her after, um, I'll Stand by You, which was her big comeback hit in something like 1994, that so I realized, oh, okay, now I need to figure out what else I need to say about this person, and then realized she had this whole other discography that had, that had bloomed after nobody cared about The Pretenders anymore, including a couple of, in, what in my opinion are her best records. so I really had a lot of fun, learning last 20 years of her career or something like that, that I really didn't know anything about. That actually really deepened my appreciation for her

ALEX 20:46

Just for the listeners who might not know, can you describe what a melismatic affectation is, or, and what it is for Chrissie Hynde?

Soba411 20:53

Yes, it's a v- it's like a vibrato sound, that is, it, it sorta comes out of your throat, I think. It's really hard to do. And also she, th- these, these lines she sings don't sound hard melodically, but if you try to do them, they're hard. Like, Talk of the Town, which I think is on their second record, the

ALEX 21:12

It is Pretenders II

Soba411 21:14

sing along to that thing, even if you have Chrissie's range, those, those lines are really hard to nail.

ALEX 21:20

Hmm

Soba411 21:21

Um, especially if, if you try to sing them the way she sings them. It's really amazing. I happen to love that song, too.

ALEX 21:29

Me too

Soba411 21:31

just the way she sings Tomorrow is on- is really hard. Um, a- and that, that, those were the kinds of things I really started appreciating as I dug deeper into the discography

ALEX 21:45

So you were a Pretenders fan. Do you remember some of the other people that you put out in that final list before you got to Chrissie Hynde

Soba411 21:52

uh, Etta James Tom Wilson Tom Wilson

ALEX 22:01

the, the, the producer?

Soba411 22:03

Yes

ALEX 22:04

Oh, the guy who produced Like a Rolling Stone

Soba411 22:08

Yes, and The

ALEX 22:08

He...

Soba411 22:09

of Silence

ALEX 22:10

Yeah. Oh, that's his best one, right? I mean, that was his cr- he was a massive, massive producer in the late '60s

Soba411 22:18

There, there, somebody did finally write a book about him. I think it came out last year or the year before, and I haven't read it yet. But he was somebody that I thought was, you know, in a lot of ways, just by virtue of those two songs, right? Like, Like a Rolling Stone and The Sounds of Silence, largely responsible for transforming American music in the 1960s.

ALEX 22:40

Couldn't agree with you more. Couldn't agree. And, and he was African American,

Soba411 22:44

yes,

ALEX 22:45

which was shocking in the studio system of the '60s. Amazing

Soba411 22:50

you know, producing these white guys. Yeah. Really remarkable. He, he was a jazz, you know, he's a, he had a jazz background, and

ALEX 22:53

Mm-hmm

Soba411 22:53

guess Columbia just assigned him to s- to produce these things.

ALEX 22:56

Mm-hmm.

Soba411 22:57

And I, I thought, "This person needs to be better appreciated." so he was on there. I think Aimee Mann was probably on there. I was, I've always been a big fan of hers.

ALEX 23:06

Mm-hmm

Soba411 23:06

Um, I wrote about one of her albums a few years ago, or one of her solo albums. Um, and I would've been happy to write any of those,

ALEX 23:14

Sure. I-

Soba411 23:15

but

ALEX 23:16

is there another book you'd like to write about music or, or another person you'd like to write a biography about?

Soba411 23:22

I sort of already am doing this in a s- rather twisted form. I, I have, um, longstanding, real affection for a, a no longer living, indie pop artist named Scott Miller, who it confuses people because there are two Scott Millers. This is the one not from the V-Roys, but the one who had a band in the '80s called Game Theory, another band in the '90s called The Loud Family. Scott was one of those, misfit, underappreciated pop savants who could never quite gain enough traction to make a career, and for people he hits in the right spot, he hits really hard. I've written about him online for the Paris Review and, Pop Matters, and a handful of other outlets, and had always wanted to write a biography of him. Uh, after he died, he took his own life, 13 years ago, a biography was in fact published of him is pretty good. Um, but I thought that a, a deeper and, less straightforward piece of writing needed to be written about a guy who was both deeper and not straightforward at all, and realized that no straight biography could ever really get that done. So that is a long way of saying I'm currently working on a piece of fiction where I've actually just fictionalized this dude, and borrowed the parts that I needed for the book that I'm writing, and I don't know how long it will take to do, and I might realize I've barked up the wrong tree completely. But, I feel like Scott Is in ways that aren't really listened to very much and may never make a widely acknowledged dent in the music listening consciousness of our culture, nonetheless really important. and his, his music, I think, at its best is gonna last in some way or another. The entire Game Theory discography went out of print, but it was re-released by Omnivore Recordings, in series over about the last decade after he passed away.

ALEX 25:39

Nice

Soba411 25:40

You c- you can still buy those records

ALEX 25:42

Great. I've, I will go give him a listen. I've heard of Game Theory. I've never heard Game Theory.

Soba411 25:48

Most people hate them. Uh, so I'm not unreservedly recommending him, but, At, at, at his best, I, I don't think anybody in the indie pop, the arty indie pop world could really touch him.

ALEX 26:00

the Chrissy Hynde biography was published 2017. Last year you published your second book called A Jewish Appendix. Tell me about that and where that came from

Soba411 26:09

That book, which is not about music, although there is a little section about The Cure in it came out of a, trip that I took in 2019 to Romania. I have ancestors there. I was not raised observant. My, my Jewishness was never particularly important to me. I just wanted to go to where my, family came from, and particularly the side of my family that I take after physically. I look just like my mom. She looked just like her mother, who looked just like her father, who came from northeastern Romania. I just wanted to see it. It wasn't until I got to Romania that I realized, oh, if you're, if you're of Jewish extraction, you're not really from these places where people came from. You were tribally a resident alien,

ALEX 26:56

No matter where you were. Sure.

Soba411 26:57

no matter where you were ever

ALEX 26:59

Mm-hmm

Soba411 26:59

in the history of the diaspora. What happened when we got, I went there with my wife, when we got there was the day that we landed, I got sick with some very mysterious ailment that had symptoms that kept changing, wouldn't respond to any medicine or rest or anything like that, and persisted until the day we left Romania three weeks later. I realized that I was having essentially an existential crisis that was afflicting me bodily because my brain didn't understand what was going on yet. And, um Came home understanding that I needed to figure out what it meant that I was Jewish. Um, and then realized that I had all throughout my life had these usually glancing encounters with that, that were often either uncomfortable or, or even just clueless. And I realized later that I, I had actually this, this full deck of cards that I needed to go back through and figure out how I got where I was and, and ultimately why that came to a head in, in Romania, and it was, it was a very transformational trip for me. And the book is about the trip and the aftermath of that trip

ALEX 28:26

What was the effect for you, once you released the book? And in writing it, did you h- have any realizations? Did you make connections with people that you had no idea existed before but were important to you in some way?

Soba411 28:42

in a lot of ways my daily life didn't really change all that much. Although I do in fact now go to a weekly Torah study session at, at a local synagogue, mainly just because I got very interested in the Hebrew Bible, which I had never read. And after reading it myself a couple of times, decided I need to actually sit in a room with some other people who've read this. And, uh, uh, I don't- people may already be familiar with this, but the way Torah study works in Judaic practice is that in the course of a year, you read the entire five books in sequence, and then at the end of the year you just go back and start over.

ALEX 29:18

Right

Soba411 29:19

so, you know, I, I sit in a room with m- people who are in many cases 30 years older than I am, and I'm not very young, who have been reading this thing, you know, i- in cycles every year. It's quite something. And this was-- I also wanted to do this because I began to understand, after I came back from that trip, that I was having all these very private, very intense, um, inner experiences. But J- Judaism is a communal religion. There is no monastic tradition in, the Jewish faith. It is, it is practiced in community, and I wanted to be around other people who were interested in this. That, that is about as far as it goes, but it really means a lot to me. Just read the Torah portion every week and go sit in a room and, and talk about it for an hour and a half with other people that are interested in it. And frankly, a lot of the people that show up at those Torah study sessions are not Jewish. About a third of them, I think, who come regularly are, are just, interested in reading Torah. so that, that has actually been, in terms of, like, my lived experience, that has been the main thing. And the other big thing That I began to understand about myself. I've always perceived myself, I think a lot of artists do, literary artists, musical artists, as something of a misfit and an outsider, and that the, the artistic impulse I think very much for most, I shouldn't speak for everybody, but I think for most artists comes from feeling like I don't quite fit in anywhere in, in the life that most people lead, and the only way I can process that is by making my art.

ALEX 31:00

Right. I agree with that, by the way. I, I feel that way too

Soba411 31:03

think it's, I think it's, I mean,

ALEX 31:06

Pretty well understood, yeah

Soba411 31:08

yeah. And I began to understand when I came back from Romania that this feeling of misfit- and otherness is very much one that, I think a lot of Jews have.

ALEX 31:23

Right. And Jewish artists, that's a, a double whammy of it.

Soba411 31:27

Right.

ALEX 31:27

Or, or a full expression of being Jewish is that you feel out of place or out of sync with your community, your country, wherever you're living, and so you become an artist to find a way to deal with that and express yourself and find some community, because you don't naturally fit in anywhere

Soba411 31:51

Yes, absolutely. And I, I had the understanding that these two parts of my life were actually connected to each other. That the part of me that was a playwright, and probably even the part of me that wrote songs when I was in high school and, and I, I actually do still write them sometimes. And all of that stuff was a, a way of understanding the world from a place of not feeling like I fit into it. And, you know, who is the greatest American artist, performing artist, and probably literary artist of the 20th century?

ALEX 32:18

Dylan.

Soba411 32:19

Bob

ALEX 32:19

Of- it is Bob Dylan in my book

Soba411 32:22

Right, who is a Jewish guy who felt so misfitted that he had to change his name.

ALEX 32:29

And changes religion

Soba411 32:31

Right, and then changed it back.

ALEX 32:32

So you're writing another book right now, which sounds like your first fictional output as a prose writer, although I assume your plays were fiction based. Is that correct?

Soba411 32:45

It's the first prose, piece of prose fiction that I will try to publish. I've wr- I've actually written, uh, two other novels, but I, I didn't think they were good enough to publish. I, I know a novelist who, who said that novels are like pancakes. You have to throw the first two or three of them away.

ALEX 33:09

I'm finishing my first one now. I don't wanna throw it away though

Soba411 33:12

Uh, he, that was, that was what he said.

ALEX 33:14

Yeah

Soba411 33:15

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel when he was 21, so I, uh, you know, your mileage may vary, as they

ALEX 33:22

Yes

Soba411 33:22

any case, um, this is the first book that I feel like is probably gonna be decent enough to, publish. And the, the memoir, A Jewish Appendix, it is It, it felt like I was writing a piece of narrative fiction even

ALEX 33:37

Interesting

Soba411 33:38

drawn from real events. Plays are funny. They are obviously made up from whole cloth for the most part, but when I'm writing them, I actually feel like I'm describing something that is really happening They're gonna be absorbed in a time-bound physical way, so it feels like an, an actual Real-life thing that's happening rather than something that is coming out of, sheerly out of imagination

ALEX 34:05

Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that.

Soba411 34:08

That's just my experience.

ALEX 34:09

Well, if other writers out there want to weigh in, would love to hear your comments.

Soba411 34:12

we can fight about it

ALEX 34:13

Yeah. Um, all right, I only have a couple other questions, and these are just general music questions A, have you ever spoken with Chrissie Hynde

Soba411 34:22

I did try to. Um, the, thing that happened somewhat weirdly with that book is that after we signed the contract for me to write the book and everything like that, I meant... I said, "Okay, I'm gonna try to get in touch with Chrissie Hynde and see if she'll talk to me about this book." There were, like, four or five months of me trying to get through to her, and then finally her manager said, "No, Chrissie Hynde doesn't wanna do this." It then transpired, like, right after that, that Chrissie Hynde was publishing her own memoir, which is called Reckless, and my publisher and I found that out, I thought the publisher was actually gonna say, "Let's not publish this book about Chrissie Hynde. Let's have you do one of these other things," but they still wanted the book. But I, I realized that the reason she didn't, probably the reason she didn't wanna talk to me was that she was saving everything for her own book. Now, it turns out to be quite, useful, I think, that both books are in print because Chrissie's book stops in about 1983, right after Learning to Crawl came out, or

ALEX 35:22

Yeah, '84.

Soba411 35:23

Um, and she gets that far, and that's the end of the book. And let's face it, that's, that part of her life is what most people wanna know about, moving to London in, in the '70s, Almost marrying Sid Vicious 'cause she wanted a green card.

ALEX 35:37

Almost marrying Johnny Lydon too

Soba411 35:39

almost... Yeah, she almost married two Sex

ALEX 35:40

Yeah.

Soba411 35:41

Um,

ALEX 35:42

for a green card or for citizenship, whatever they called it. Yeah

Soba411 35:46

know, hanging around with The Clash, trying for years to start a band, finally starting The Pretenders, then they become a very big deal. Two of The Pretenders died of drug overdoses. Um, Learning to Crawl is her, you know, grieving slash comeback et cetera, record after all of that, then the book ends. and she has this whole other career after that that is really quite worthy of, study. So, uh, i- in the end, it was, it was actually kinda great that she left all that material for me, but I think that's why she didn't wanna speak to somebody else and just give, story away. And, uh, because I had had a prehistory as a baseball writer and a, and as a basketball writer interviewing athletes, it's actually easier to biographize somebody if you haven't talked to them because they will tell you, first of all, generally either makes you much more sympathetic or much more antipathetic to them, you need to try to not be either one.

ALEX 36:53

Interesting. But then you also have to use some of the quotes in order to justify having done the interview, and then you're using their narrative instead of whatever factual information may be out there if there's a conflict. They're gonna tell you their version of it

Soba411 37:08

You're, you're writing what they want you to say, and a lot of what they're telling you is basically lies.

ALEX 37:16

Yeah

Soba411 37:18

So, uh, you know, I... It would've been cool to talk to her, I guess. I, I've, uh, I've, I've heard that she's really quite guarded with interviewers and can actually be rather prickly. but She's, she's not, she's not easy.

ALEX 37:32

You know, that she's an iconoclast. She can do what she wants.

Soba411 37:35

Yes. I, I don't, I don't require my artists to be nice

ALEX 37:38

No, separate the art from the artist. I struggle with it, but I do it all the time. Have you ever seen The Pretenders live?

Soba411 37:46

I saw them play while I was working on the book, actually. They played in Charlotte, which is about two hours from where I live, and I drove down there and saw them. They were excellent. She, she occasionally was still playing with Martin Chambers at that time, the original drummer, but they didn't really get along, and I don't think she ever thought he was a very good drummer. and the, the guy that she has been playing with for a number of years, James Walbourne, uh, is a killer guitar player and pretty good keyboardist actually, too. And I actually came to know him first through another band that he was in called the Pernice Brothers, um, who are a wonderful pop band, from Massachusetts, although he's English. And I, I was a fan of his from being in that band, and then later she snapped him up from that band, he's now her chief collaborator

ALEX 38:32

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I saw them two years ago open for the Foo Fighters.

Soba411 38:38

Oh, how were they?

ALEX 38:39

they were great. They were better than the Foo Fighters, quite frankly. They killed.

Soba411 38:43

That doesn't surprise me.

ALEX 38:43

They killed. Um

Soba411 38:45

she's a, Chrissie's a road dog. She knows how to do this

ALEX 38:47

She's a pro. She's great. And I saw them on the Learning to Crawl Tour in 1984,

Soba411 38:53

Oh,

ALEX 38:54

as, yeah, I saw them at the height of their powers. Although, as you noted, post James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon. Um, but, you know, with Robbie, I think Robbie McIntosh was playing guitar, and Martin Chambers. And Martin Chambers' big move was he'd hit the cymbal at a big point, and he'd let go of the stick, and it would go flying into the audience, and that's how he threw sticks. It was amazing. I had never seen anyone do that before. But that was a great show. That was at Radio City Music Hall, I was with a, my friend Terry, who lives in Charlotte now, and, uh, we went to see The Pretenders, and The Alarm, and Simple Minds. It was Simple Minds, then The Alarm, then The Pretenders. It was a great show What was your first concert that you ever saw?

Soba411 39:40

The B-52s

ALEX 39:42

Where and when?

Soba411 39:46

Carmichael Auditorium, which was the, is no longer, but was where the UNC Tar Heels played basketball.

ALEX 39:55

before the Dean Dome

Soba411 39:56

Yes, in, I'm gonna say 1981 or 2

ALEX 40:01

Wow. Good time to see the B-52s.

Soba411 40:05

Yeah.

ALEX 40:05

That's awesome

Soba411 40:07

It was my, it was the first time I ever smelled marijuana. I didn't know what it was. I just thought something weird w- Some weird smoke, and then I, I f- figured it

ALEX 40:15

That's where I first smelled marijuana too at my first concert, which was

Soba411 40:19

Yeah.

ALEX 40:19

the Village People at Madison Square Garden. Yeah.

Soba411 40:23

well, you saw some really good

ALEX 40:24

Yeah, some good ones. Um, what's the most memorable concert you've ever seen?

Soba411 40:30

Uh I, uh, probably Fishbone

ALEX 40:35

One of my all-time favorite bands

Soba411 40:38

Yeah, I saw them a couple of times actually, but they, they did one show, um, must've been in high school at the time, the Rialto Theater in Raleigh, um, which is not a big venue. And I was already a fan of them, and this was not terribly long after their album Truth and Soul had come out,

ALEX 40:57

One of the top 10 greatest albums of my life, in my opinion

Soba411 41:01

great. And we were all, all my high school friends, I mean, we were all like really into that record. And oh, Fishbone's coming to play here, so we, we got tickets to the show, and was one of the most incredible live performances I'd ever seen. It was the most controlled chaos I, I've, I've ever seen a rock band pull off. They were, they were so tight, and, you know, there were like seven or eight dudes in that

ALEX 41:31

Yeah

Soba411 41:32

at that time. They were incredibly tight, but you would never... The only way you could tell was that they didn't miss a single note, because it was sheer mayhem on

ALEX 41:40

Yeah

Soba411 41:41

And this was at the time when, um, Angelo, He was the le- co-lead singer and saxophone He played a baritone sax that was so big that during the encore he came out with no clothes on, and the saxophone was so big it could cover his junk while he played. It was just a, it was just an incredible performance. They, they were at, at the best, at the height of their career, which was probably right around then, they, there was probably no band in the world that could, that could top them live

ALEX 42:11

Yeah. I've heard, I never saw them, but one of my all-time favorite bands, and I, unfortunately while they were at their pinnacle, I was living in Vermont, and they just didn't, they didn't come up to Vermont a whole lot. Great band. It's, it's a shame that they couldn't keep it together. And they're still out touring now, but it's such a fraction of the original band. Um,

Soba411 42:31

him and Norwood now in the, in the band. They, but they, they were, they were, that, at, at the time they were amazing. And I will also throw in the, the last rock show that I went to, I think it was actually last year, that I think I told you this when we were talking before we did this. I went and heard Swervedriver play in Raleigh. back in the early '90s, which they never really fit into. I didn't really get into them until much, much later. And go figure, their first tour post-COVID, five years after the pandemic, although they are an English band, first show of their first tour since then was in Raleigh. no idea why, and it was a little sloppy 'cause they hadn't played together in quite some time. But they were... That, that, just one of those I can't believe this is happening m- moments, and it was, it was a delight. I will put in a good word for, their album, I Wasn't Born to Lose You, which came out in 2015. The album title's taken from a Dylan song. That, that record, it, if, if you like heavy guitar rock with melodies, is fantastic

ALEX 43:37

Thank you for that recommendation. Last question from me. Alive or dead, is there a band that you wish you had seen that you never saw?

Soba411 43:47

Well, I probably wish I had seen one of those iconic arena rock bands from the '70s like The Who or Zeppelin, just because I, just feel like I s- we all should have seen one of those bands live when they were doing their thing the way they were really doing it in the '70s

ALEX 44:07

I saw The Who in the '80s and it wasn't quite the same

Soba411 44:11

Yeah, I mean, nothing against

ALEX 44:12

And the '90s

Soba411 44:14

right, without Keith Moon, it, you know. so those, acts I, I, you know, I sort of wish. And Prince, I really regret that I never saw Prince,

ALEX 44:27

Yeah, me too. I saw him play one song at David Letterman, at the David Letterman show during his symbol era, and that was, it was one song, it was weird, and it wasn't, like, peak Prince

Soba411 44:42

What about you? What are the, what are the acts you wish you had seen or wish you, still wish you could

ALEX 44:46

Well, so there, yeah, so the mo- the act I wish I had seen that I couldn't see is Jimi Hendrix, by far and away. Um, I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan, I've seen Clapton, I've seen Jeff Beck, I've seen Jimmy Page. Um, but yeah, I wish I had seen Jimi Hendrix. And alive still is AC/DC. I absolutely love AC/DC and never took the chance. I could've seen them any time, and so I bought tickets for September. They're playing at Giant Stadium, and it's just Angus and Brian. And, uh, I'm going and I don't care. I'm just going 'cause I'm gonna check it off a list and fulfill a childhood dream, so. I've seen hundreds of bands, and I don't know why I never pushed myself to see AC/DC.

Soba411 45:33

That's a good one.

ALEX 45:33

Yeah

Soba411 45:34

that, that, that is today's Who or Zeppelin,

ALEX 45:36

Yeah, I mean, they're so mega in terms of they did one thing, they did it really well, and they just don't stop doing it. They keep going, and it's amazing

Soba411 45:47

The, the other... I, I will just put in one more. I, I almost said this other one 'cause I think it's, it's, it's, it... 'Cause you can still see this. Um, a handful of years ago, Chris Stamey, who was in the DB's, organized a live performance of Big Star's Third in its entirety, which then toured.

ALEX 46:08

Really?

Soba411 46:09

was- Ooh. I saw, I saw the, I saw the first one here in, in North Carolina, which is where Ch- Chris Stamey lives in Chapel Hill.

ALEX 46:15

Got it

Soba411 46:15

Um, and so he got a start. Mike Mills from R.E.M. came and played in it. Jody Stephens, the original Big Star

ALEX 46:22

Yeah.

Soba411 46:22

in

ALEX 46:23

Yeah

Soba411 46:23

Mitch Easter, who was intimately tied with all those

ALEX 46:27

Yeah

Soba411 46:28

all the guitar parts. They got a string section together. They got all these guest singers to come in. It was truly extraordinary, and they now have a five, a f- like a five-person band that still goes around doing

ALEX 46:41

And they play all the Big Star catalog or just Big Star Three?

Soba411 46:44

The whole

ALEX 46:44

Third, sorry. Yeah.

Soba411 46:46

Yeah, the whole

ALEX 46:47

Cool. That'd be great to see

Soba411 46:49

I would, I would put in a plug for. It's their- they can really play those songs

ALEX 46:52

Excellent. Thank you. So my last question is what question didn't I ask that I should've that's relevant to our conversation that listeners might like to hear about?

Soba411 47:05

Uh, you actually, uh, asked it, which is, are you writing about, are you writing about music now? 'Cause I wanted to talk about Scott Miller.

ALEX 47:11

Yeah, good

Soba411 47:12

and, I really think that, that, um, getting into the corners of rock and pop music is as important as being right in the middle of the water,

ALEX 47:23

Mm-hmm.

Soba411 47:23

uh, where, where all of the justifiably famous stuff is. and that, that's the main thing. The, the other, the other thing since you s- since we, have a personal connection with Eric and Quincy that, that, um, that I wanted to bring up was that the last long form piece of music writing I did was, um, something that I wrote just for Quincy. she, she had been over at my house one night and we were listening to records, and she said, "I need some more music to listen to. Can you, like, make me a list of music I should listen to?" I sat down to make her a list of records and found myself writing little bits about each one, um, very quickly found myself writing, I think I told you this, what turned out to be, like, a 20,000-word book for Quincy about those records, but also about music generally, and turned into something of a statement of aesthetics that I didn't intend to write, and, um, a book about our friendship. I've known Quincy for almost 40 years, and I think that the thing about music writing, w- which is famously compared to dancing about, about architecture, um, that what really gives it blood and life and value is not just the critical discernment of is, is this good, what does it sound like, and all of those things. But it, it's just as music is, I think it's trying to forge a very direct connection between people through

ALEX 48:58

I th-

Soba411 48:59

sound, I really loved writing that thing for her, and I, I, I hope I get opportunities to do that sort of thing again

ALEX 49:06

Could you pull out the personal parts and, and publish the list of music with your thoughts about it?

Soba411 49:14

Yeah, probably, but I'm not sure I would want to.

ALEX 49:16

Okay, fair enough. Just thought

Soba411 49:18

I could. I thought about adding to it actually, and then trying to publish it. Yes, maybe pulling out some of the, some of the finer details that, uh,

ALEX 49:27

Too personal, as necessarily to share.

Soba411 49:29

or it would be too You're not the first person to ask me that question, and I might do it

ALEX 49:32

I'd love to read it. I don't care if you publish it, just send me a copy.

Soba411 49:36

Okay. Fair enough

ALEX 49:37

Well, that's all we've got for today, Adam. Thank you so much.

Soba411 49:41

Thank you so much. This was a real delight.

ALEX 49:43

And that's it for today's conversation. My guest has been Adam Sobsey. You can find his essays at sobsey.com and his books are available at Amazon. I'll make sure to include the appropriate links in the show's description. Thanks so much for being here, Adam, and to my viewers, thank you for joining us. As always, if you like what you heard today, I'd appreciate it if you would like and either subscribe or follow this channel to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also, a reminder that I release a playlist for every episode, so look for the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast playlist on Spotify and Apple Music every week, this week featuring songs that we talked about on the show today. So please check that out. Additionally, I wanna know what you think, so please leave me a comment and I'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock-N-Roll Show podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host Alex Gadd, and until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets. Hey, thank you again, man. I really did enjoy that

Soba411 51:11

Thank you. That was, that was great.

ALEX 51:13

I would love it if you'd come back on when you publish your next book

Soba411 51:17

Oh, I'd be happy to. It

ALEX 51:19

Great.

Soba411 51:19

soon,

ALEX 51:20

No, I, believe me, I'm not rushing you. I understand the, the process.