Over the years, I think Rolling Stone magazine has maintained a higher standard of journalism than most music rags. The majority of music publications are written by writers in the employ of publicists and most rarely have an article on topics other than a performer’s favorite color or fictional creative process. Although their musical tastes and mine are not always precisely the same, Rolling Stone is usually an example of what journalism ought to be.
A week or so ago writer Elizabeth Goodman did a brief piece for Rolling Stone’s online incarnation where she really blasted Trent Reznor. Full disclaimer: The Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life. When the “Get Down, Make Love” single came out, I drove from DC to Chicago, partly so I could get it from Wax Trax before it was widely available. Some of this is a topic for another article, but I wanted to fully disclose where I’m coming from on this.
In the recent Rolling Stone piece, Elizabeth Goodman chortled about Trent Reznor not being allowed to be giddy with happiness, being goth and all. Reznor apparently confided to Rolling Stone that he had perhaps taken so long between albums because he had sort of lost his confidence and was too worried what people thought of him. The goth-industrial icon went on to explain that he felt he was developmentally past that and was likely to only improve as an artist. The writer quoted what he said and summed it up saying, “After tiring of patting his own back, Reznor went on to pontificate on another of his recent epiphanies.” A little harsh. Apparently, Reznor’s second epiphany was realizing that he didn’t care much for the twenty bands playing overly-generic, over-produced, whiny-ass emo songs he had heard on the radio and that he couldn’t much tell them apart. (Bad news Trent: most radio stations don’t really have a whole twenty bands in rotation at any given time.)
The artist went on to say that he was suspicious of the motives of why a guy might be trying to start a band today: “Is he trying to change the world and do something different and express himself…or is it because they want to fuck Paris Hilton and be photographed outside trendy restaurants?”
I think Trent is right. The nature of celebrity has changed so much. For example, I used to get so excited when a channel like HBO wanted to come shoot at my punk rock group house and interview me and Forrest Black, even though none of us had cable at the time. But HBO was not secretly trying to set up cameras in my house to catch me breaking it off with a lover or having an argument with a housemate about whose dishes were in the sink. (The dishes were mine; I use plastic now.) At the time, if HBO sent a production crew over, they were going to let me outline which areas were public and which were private, they were going to respect my wishes, and news was a straighforward interview, and not getting photographed with the wrong sex partner in a trendy restaurant.
The really cool thing about the Rolling Stone article is that it has enough rawness to be journalism. The cynic in me wonders if maybe it is not just a very very clever placed article, something designed to appeal to the sort of people who liked Pretty Hate Machine. But Elizabeth Goodman’s article feels like actual music journalism. She didn’t just write the same nonsense bullet points from a publicist which one normally sees in music articles these days. She held my interest. She may not have personally liked Trent, but she wrote her article in a way where readers could actually get a human feel for both the journalist and the journalistic subject.
So, kudos to Rolling Stone and Elizabeth Goodman and Trent Reznor for all still flying the flag.
Incidentally, Trent has been on the cover of Rolling Stone at least twice. I’m just sayin’.
