Soundcheck: An interview with "formerly famous" music critic John Mendels(s)ohn

Back at the end of January, Isthmus published a front page story about "How We Sound" – a review of the Madison music scene by John Mendels(s)ohn, a self-described "formerly famous music critic." The article sparked eleven angry pages of discussion on Isthmus’ website, thedailypage.com, and six letters to the editor. Although some people praised Mendels(s)ohn, most lambasted him.

"That article tasted like a shitty omelet that has a little bit of every possible ingredient from the inside door of the fridge," wrote one person. Another blasted, "What the FUCK kind of failed rockstar-cum-critic retard spells his name with a parenthetical letter?"

Well, let’s find out.

California native John Mendels(s)ohn, 60, has written for a variety of magazines, most famously Rolling Stone (and less famously for Chic, “Hustler’s slightly less respectable sister publication”). He’s also written books about the Kinks, the Pixies and Kate Bush. His book about the Pixies garnered withering criticism on amazon.com (“If I could burn one book, this would be it,” wrote one reviewer).

Mendels(s)ohn moved recently to Madison from London, where he had been living with his wife for five years. With their marriage currently in limbo, he’s carving out a new life for himself and soliciting work wherever he can. Locally, he’s written for the Wisconsin State Journal, Isthmus and Madison Magazine. After a frustrated attempt to start a theatre company in town, he’s also hoping to perform a one-man show at Restaurant Magnus sometime in April. (It would highlight his experiences in the coked-up offices of Chic in the early 80s.)

I recently met with Mendels(s)ohn at a downtown coffee shop. He showed up wearing a Honeymooners T-shirt and talked for almost two hours. He embodies an odd combination of balls-to-the-wall confidence, sincere self-deprecation and “beg-your-pardon” politeness.

What were you like in high school?

It was wretched until senior year. I’m good at loneliness, isolation and boredom. I’m saying it sort of flippantly, but it’s absolutely true. It’s been tough moving to a city on my own to carve out a life for myself. I’m not the sort of person who strikes up conversations with strangers. As a child, they supposed something was wrong with me. I was eight before I learned to ride a two-wheeler, 15 before I learned to swim. My mother was a neurotic, lonely, painful person and she taught me her worldview. I wasn’t a Cub Scout or anything like that. I loved sports but I was really bad at them. I won the school creative writing contest every year in junior high, but I can’t begin to tell you how little that counted.

How did you get your start writing?

I had written a review of Led Zeppelin for the student newspaper in college. I couldn’t stand Led Zeppelin. So, I sent Rolling Stone the same review. They printed it by virtue of the fact that I think they received 150 reviews that said, “This is the greatest thing ever!” and I said, “No, I don’t like this much.” So, they went with the unusual approach.

Didn’t you review Abby Road when it first came out?

I was thrilled by that. To review a Beatles album for Rolling Stone was all anyone could ever aspire to. I was just a kid in a little apartment on Venice Beach. I think the Beatles were at their best pre-1965. When they became self-conscious and arty, a lot of the vitality and excitement of it was lost. But I gave it a fairly glowing review.

How did your career move from there?

At that time, the record industry was changing. It had been dominated by people in matching white plastic belts and white plastic loafers who listened to Frank Sinatra in their Cadillacs. When they discovered that a large percentage of what they were selling was this music that they didn’t even begin to understand, they began looking for young people to work for them who could explain it to them. I really loved the Kinks. Their label hired me to work for them, so I was writing ads and things. I was making a lot of money, driving a Porsche, buying clothes from the same tailor as Rod Steward. I was on top of the world. I had my own group, Christopher Milk. And that failed ignominiously. Our one claim to fame was that we were the only American group produced by Chris Thomas, a famous English producer who produced the Sex Pistols, Elton John, Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend. I mistakenly believed that I could always come back to being a famous writer. I discovered that I was mistaken and that I couldn’t go back to being a famous writer. And since then my life has been trying to regain what I had.

Since when?

Oh, since 1975, something like that.

But you’ve written books.

There’s no comparison. If you liked rock’n’roll, you read Rolling Stone. Period. And it might have been all you read, because they didn’t have any competition. If you were a Rolling Stone writer, it was really something special. Nothing compares.

What do you think of it now?

It’s not remotely the same. It’s really dull. At the time that I was writing for it...is ‘confluence’ the right word? All these circumstances came together. You had this phenomenon where people hadn’t written seriously about pop music before. You had all this fervor and all these talented, passionate people, many of whom were extremely drug-addled, which in many ways ruined them but in other ways inspired flights of fancy. Things weren’t corporate and controlled then. There was a lot of wildness and off-the-wall-ness that doesn’t exist anymore.

You don’t think that exists anywhere now?

I’m sure it does. There’s probably thousands of websites you could go to, where people are passionate and funny and insightful. But Rolling Stone had this unique position. Without internet, you couldn’t get online and discover things for yourself. You had to go out and buy Rolling Stone.

What happened with the Pixies book?

I don’t think it’s bad at all. I did the book because nobody else on the list (that my editor gave me) was very interesting. I sincerely wanted to write a really nice biography – a journalistic biography with lots and lots of interviews. I wrote the Pixies’ management and the guy seemed very enthusiastic about the idea. What happened was, after the initial enthusiastic response, the manager pulled the plug on me and said, “We don’t want to do it.” I was now in the position of delivering the book without their cooperation. Which meant I had to do what I hadn’t wanted to do in the first place, which is write a critical history of the Pixies. The more I listened to them, the more I hated it. I couldn’t bear that music. Anyone who does enjoy it, my hat’s off to you. I envy you if you get pleasure from that music. I could have lied about it and tried to think of good things to say, but the music annoyed me so much, the book wound up as a sarcasm-fest. The editor let me flesh out the biography with short fictional stories that alternated with the critical/biographical chapters. I invented this character who was a Pixies fan, and told her story from late adolescence to middle age. I’m proud of those stories. It really annoyed Pixies fans because I denigrated their group. I don’t think they worked very hard to find merit in the fictional part. I was trying to understand what people liked about the Pixies – I was trying to see the world through their eyes.

Why did you move to Madison?

This painful frustration (of getting no work) in London just showed no signs of abating. I was there five years and it felt like five years of banging my head against the wall. I do genuinely, honestly think that I’m a better writer than a lot of the people who are getting regularly published in London. Mostly I was desperate to get out the U.K., so anywhere would have done. My sister lives in Kenosha, and she’d mentioned that Madison’s really nice. Now, I might leave soon. I mean, it’s gratifying having articles in the Isthmus, but I hate this snow.

What do you think about Madison?

I think parts of it are quite beautiful. Someone once told me, "The Midwest doesn’t much like ostentation." I like that about people, especially coming from L.A. But there is this sort of preciousness about Madison. People here seem fairly parochial and defensive. This "if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all" attitude seems fairly widespread. I could have a 98 percent positive impression of the city. Does that mean I’m not entitled to remark on the two percent I don’t like? Making nice and coddling makes for extremely dull writing and criticism.

What about the reaction to your article in Isthmus about the local music scene? Your article got a heated response.

A lot of people seemed to take it perfectly straight. I was making fun of myself (in my bio). I can’t think of anything duller than a recitation of my credentials, so I made it self-mocking. I think it’s funnier that way. I mean, I did have a conversation with Jimi Hendrix once. It was a two-line conversation at the Whiskey a GoGo in Los Angeles, a couple months before his death. I had a three foot long red fringe on my jacket, a la Sly and the Family Stone. He said "Nice jacket, man," and I said "Thanks."

Is it hard for you to hear all this criticism of your writing?

No, I don’t think so. To be honest, I think people write because they enjoy attention. I won’t deny that that’s the case with me, too. I did do some writing in London and nobody ever said anything at all, nobody ever noticed. It’s gratifying to be noticed. People seem to think that I was saying there was a lot of mediocre music in Madison. Well, of course there is. There’s a lot of mediocre music in London, in Los Angeles. Most of the arts everywhere are mediocre, by definition. That’s why the people who do it well are paid astronomically well.

But Britney Spears is paid astronomically well, and I wouldn’t consider her the best singer.

You’re absolutely right. Sometimes some completely unlikely person just walks through the door at exactly the right moment and gets to be a movie star. I think that might be one of the key realizations of adulthood, when you find out life is not a meritocracy. Why is Madonna a popular recording artist? Why is Adam Sandler a movie star? These people are really loathsome.

What music have you been listening to lately?

Well, I’ve been listening to the Blueheels because I like them. Mostly, I don’t listen to music. This is going to sound terribly pretentious, but I listen to my own music. Sometimes I’ll just be sitting there and I’ll have an idea for a melody. So I try to stay tuned to that.

What are you currently working on?

Well, I’ve got an article coming up in Isthmus on Gomeroke. And I did a piece for Madison Magazine on the BDSM scene. It’s a subject that’s close to my heart. I’ve always felt this is worthwhile work to be doing: helping a reader understand that this isn’t something to be threatened or repulsed by. Thirty years ago, homosexuality was largely regarded as pathological or at least slightly distasteful. Now, no enlightened person thinks that. Kink is exactly the same. It looks scary, tawdry and distasteful, but the people who do it, do it lovingly. Not that you wouldn’t find the occasional freak, as in any walk of life. BDSM people are really very kind to one another, expressing themselves erotically in a consensual way.

So, what did you think of the BDSM scene in Madison?

Most of the people I met were extremely charming. I wouldn’t wish the Club Inferno on my worst enemy, for a very simple reason: they allow smoking. You go to the club and three days later your clothes still reek. And there were a lot of guys walking around looking like the ghost of 1969, like they’d taken too many acid trips. Some people there were very poorly dressed. In London, everyone would have spent a thousand pounds on his or her costume.

Why do have parentheses in your last name?

My real name is with one ‘s.’ But when I was around 30, I thought it would be cute to add a second ‘s’ to make it like the classical composer. When I moved to England, I had to go back to the original one ‘s’ because my passport has one ‘s’ and my wife was spelling it with one ‘s.’ So I made the second ‘s’ optional. Hence the parentheses. On a scale of ‘not funny at all’ to my favorite Andy Kaufman moment or Monty Python sketch, it’s a little funny. It makes my byline slightly unusual.

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