To whet your appetites, here's the introduction to Ghosts and Ballyhoo. It explains everything you'll need to know about the book.
"I was the most haunted person you could ever meet. Places, books, movies, animals, occurrences, sounds, and smells left me shivering, sometimes for years. Mostly, though, people and music haunted me. I’ve recently come to realize the inevitability of my becoming a music journalist, despite my stutter, my lack of musical training, and my difficulties interacting with people. My lifelong pattern has been to pursue that which has haunted me. I say "has been," because I may--may--have finally changed my ways. Time will tell.
"This memoir is about my ten years as a music journalist in Los Angeles, my obsessive quest to "help" one of the finest musicians I’ve ever met, and my inability to move beyond a failed relationship with a woman I’ll call Carmen, herself a musician. The remarkable way in which this memoir came about has determined the form it takes, which is seven anthologies of short stories by me, and six interludes of words spoken by former Frank Zappa bassist Scott Thunes (pronounced TOO-niss), my central musical ghost. I first interviewed him in 1996 and wrote an article about him for Bass Player, titled "Requiem for a Heavyweight?" It was this article and the interview I conducted with bassist Gene Simmons of Kiss, published in Bass Player as "Call Him Doctor Love," that convinced me I had a permanent place in the world of music journalism. As you will see, those two interviews actually signed my death warrant in the field.
"Since I‘ve already written extensively about Thunes and Simmons in my first book In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians [Limelight Editions, 2001], this memoir will touch only peripherally on the experience of sitting down with them in 1996. Simmons haunted me almost as much as Scott Thunes, but as with virtually all of the musicians I interviewed in my career, there was no question of further engagement with him after our initial interaction. It was just business. A few were different. John Taylor of Duran Duran, Stephen Jay of the "Weird Al" Yankovic band, and Bryan Beller of far too many projects to mention (This is my memoir, Bryan! Mine! Write your own!) come to mind. But for some reason Scott Thunes and I had a much longer, much more personal relationship until I ended it in 2003, when I resigned from music journalism and cut off all contact with people connected to the decade-long debacle I’d engineered for myself.
"What haunted me most about Scott Thunes was that he’d resigned from music years before I did, an absolute tragedy in my mind. Bass was my chosen instrument; when listening to music, I always heard the bass first and foremost. There is no bassist like Scott Thunes. His is an entirely original voice that relies on no obvious influences. What makes Thunes unique is his ability to express emotion on his instrument, particularly when performing live with other musicians. Rather than play bass lines, he accompanies his band mates in the traditional sense, improvising flourishes and ornamentation that propel the players into a much higher, much more passionate level of musicianship. It’s a remarkable skill, and it tore out my heart that he had given it up.
"Despite my genuine liking of Thunes and my admiration for his talent, perceptive readers will probably be able to work out for themselves another reason I was obsessed with helping him. There's no need for me to spell it out. Instead, I’ll let everything just sort of unfold. Since Thunes haunted me as much as my long-departed Carmen, I've decided to include long passages of his own words, the majority of which are taken from an unpublished interview I conducted with him in 1997. Thunes's story is central to mine, but not for the reasons I originally thought.
"It was extremely difficult for me to reconstruct the timeline of my stint at Bass Player, because I’d deleted all my e-mails from the magazine and Miller Freeman had canceled my free subscription in 2002. I haven’t read the magazine in over ten years. Some of the dates I give of events may not be completely accurate. Who cares, though?
"This is a strange book, the strangeness of which is as inevitable as both my career in music journalism and its demise. I’m a strange person, and the way the book came to be is one of the strangest episodes I’ve ever witnessed. I happen to be a believer in both destiny and free will. Maybe I’ll write about that someday. For now, I present these anthologies and interludes of hauntings, of what to do and not to do, and of how to be and not to be.
"One of my favorite painters is Otto Dix, a veteran of World War I. His images are truly the most disgusting, horrific, unflinching portrayals of war ever created. Critics couldn't understand why he produced such art. Dix’s answer has stuck with me ever since I read it years ago: 'Painting is an act of banishment.' I had to write this book. Readers should know I wrote it entirely without malice, except for three or four sentences that are very malicious toward one person. Since I earned the right to be momentarily malicious, however, I don’t apologize. On the whole, this memoir was written so that I could come to terms, bear witness, and entertain you, but mostly it was a way for me to banish."
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