A coupla years ago I knocked rock writer Jonah Weiner over a really terrible review of the godawful Blueprint 3, another scmuck bore. And I was write, but, really who wants to be judged on their worse writing? I have a review of Spoon at Radio City Music Hall that was so lousy I had to check the by-line and make sure it was me who had written that crap.
But Weiner followed it with an underwhelming Marc Ronson profile in Rolling Stone and I wondered again why this guy was such hot stuff and I wasn’t.
Well now I know why.
Earlier this year, Weiner wrote a terrific profile of Daft Punk, undoubtedly the best thing I’ve read about the duo it was part history, part tube hopper and it seemed to reflect so well on how it was done, how it was put together and where it would go to from here: what had happened and what should happen to EDM. Compared to Ryan Dombal’s lousy Pitchfork interview, it was Shakespeare.
But the current issue of Rolling Stone was better. I can’t express my admiration for Weiner’s writing in the current Rolling Stone highly enough. The Lorde interview was good, nothing wrong with it, but the Paul McCartney interview was simply magical. Near the beginning, he has McCartney discussing the photographer Peggy Sirota: “She was great, she was cool. I kept thinking ‘If this was in the Sixties, I’d try and be pulling her.’” That was really insightful and humanizing and the article is filled with moments like that.
It isn’t for Jonah to judge McCartney but when he quotes McCartney as having “someone else in The room”, Lennon, who he bounces ideas off, Weiner has it both ways.
This is refreshing and illuminating writing on a superstar we have read about countless times.